


Origins of a Hero

by kurthoppe1973



Category: G.I. Joe - All Media Types
Genre: Origin Story, Other, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-17 13:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8145934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurthoppe1973/pseuds/kurthoppe1973
Summary: The Vietnam-era chronicles of the future Joe Top Kick...





	1. Chapter 1

FIC: "Origins of a Hero"

Prologue

-xxx-

__

From the Desk of

Conrad Steven Hauser

Sergeant Major, U. S. Army

Saint Louis, Missouri

04 July, 2004

__

War is hell.

But for some people, war is home. Perhaps that’s what I’ve felt about myself ever since I started in this grisly business of killing. The fact that I’ve survived so long, across so many major conflicts and secret operations that the general public would never hear or read about, is as solid a testament as I could ever find. I still think back about the guys that I’ve served with, who didn’t make it out of those far-flung hellholes around the world. Maybe through my recollections, their sacrifices can be given the honors they deserve.

I decided to start writing down my memories of these past thirty-plus years of military service when I was still a snot-nosed nineteen-year-old soldier shipping out to the Republic of Vietnam. Sometimes, when I read over the old notes and scrawls that I squirreled away in some rusty, discarded cal-50 ammo can, I can still picture my kick-ass buddies laughing and smiling. I can still smell the fresh nuc nom fish paste hanging in the dank air of the Viet Cong tunnels, and hear the screams of the dead.

All that’s left of the battles I’ve fought and the departed friends I’ve fought with are these tiny passages from bygone days, memorialized on scraps of cardboard military ration boxes or shreds of salvaged paper from some enemy headquarters that I had raided.

I even have a note that I wrote to myself on the inside face of an old Marlboro cigarette pack from the very day I first ran into a certain guy named "Snake Eyes". I never thought that old pack of smokes would be worth so much to me now in the way of understanding life’s circumstances.

Every personal story has a beginning. I guess mine started on the day I turned seventeen, in a blue-collar suburb of Saint Louis, Missouri. They didn’t use the term ‘blue collar’ back then, to describe a neighborhood of regular, working stiffs. But that was where I grew up.

My mother, Charlotte Auberge-Hauser, was French. She grew up in a little wine-growing hamlet outside of Paris and met my father during the Allied drive across Europe in 1944. Yeah, that’s right, readers. My pop was a soldier in the Second Big One. He fought in W-W-Two. Douglas James Hauser, Staff Sergeant, United States – frickin’ – Army.

Dad was a second-generation German immigrant, the son of a steel worker, who almost had a very different life, had the government actually started rounding up ethnic Germans like they did the Japanese. Instead, they let him join the Big Green Machine and risk his life on the battle lines. I really admired my dad. I still do. After the Army, he worked in a local factory, making automobiles and a decent salary. At least he did everything he could to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. Dad was a good man.

Sometimes I wonder how my mom, pretty as she is, hooked up with a dog faced grunt like my pop. But then again, my own situation isn’t much different. I can never say enough how beautiful Shana is, and how dumb that redhead must be to want a simple-minded, sonufabitch combat soldier like me to be her husband. I have told her more than once that despite my confidence and take-charge attitude, she’s a girl who should’ve been way out of my league.

And if Shana ever sees this, I can also never say enough that I’m only joking about her being dumb. She’s one person that can whip my ass into shape. And I’m the dummy for letting her get away with it. So I won’t cross her… too often.

Anyway, my pop died in the mid-sixties, leaving my mom and me to fend for ourselves. We didn’t do too badly; Mom worked in a beauty parlor while I did odd jobs around the neighborhood. I found that I was pretty good with my hands. Later I found out that my hands could get me into trouble. Although I was a decent guy, playing football for the local high school team, I also used to get into a lot of fights.

Winning at those early contests of brawling ability helped me to learn not to take any bullshit from anyone. But for a while, I strayed from the straight and narrow. I used to bare-knuckle box against the tough-as-nails Irish kids around the neighborhood and took cash bets to beat the shit out of other kids – mostly kids that were bigger than me. Once in a while, I would also kick the crap out of local bullies, so my fighting wasn’t all for personal gain.

I didn’t mind it. At least I didn’t have to beg my mom for money to hit the corner store with. She never asked where the money train came from either. I hid my ill-gotten gains quite shrewdly by tucking them in with her mad money, in the kitchen cookie jar of all places.

Well, the fighting streak backfired on me when I was a sophomore in high school. The cops caught me in a bout of fisticuffs under the gym bleachers after school, and brought me before a judge who threatened me with a youth correctional facility unless I straightened out, and I had to do it pretty damn quick, thank-you-very-much _. I credit the judge with being the asshole who changed my life forever. Because I decided that the Army was better than going to the kids’ pokey till I turned eighteen._

When I hit seventeen years old, on the fifth of April in nineteen sixty-eight, I said my last goodbye to my mom for the next few years. I still recall watching her crying on the bus station’s platform when my ride left Saint Louis to take me to Army Basic Training. At least the money I stashed in her cookie jar would help until I could send home my first government paycheck…

-xxx-


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter One

Graduation Day

-xxx-

__

The first milestone in my long military career was when I got through cutting my teeth in training and earned my Green Beret. Back then, there was a war on.

America was fighting in the Republic of Vietnam, and boys my age or younger were dying in stinking jungles thousands of miles away from their homes and families. Their sacrifices were supposed to contain the threat of Communism against a freedom-loving Asian people. I thought that was bullshit and government double-talk.

At least I had the opportunity to fight, if I didn’t get sent to Europe to wet-nurse an empty stretch of dirt trace along the Three Sisters. Then again, camping out at a Fulda hofbrauhaus _wouldn’t be the worst way to serve my country. At least I could practice all of my "native" languages in Europe._

Mom taught me French across the kitchen table every morning while I was growing up and Dad took every moment he could to teach me German. My high school teachers were shocked when I could switch between languages like turning on a light switch. I was willing to bet the Army wouldn’t mind me being able to do it either. That’s why I wanted to try for the Special Forces. They needed guys who could talk the talk in those distant battle zones…

-xxx-

John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and Center

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

March, 1970

"Hey, Hauser!" shouted a voice from across the darkened enlisted men’s barracks bay. Only a trickle of moonlight filtering in through the windows made the bay’s contents visible. Neatly lined up rows of twin bunk racks followed the long walls from one end of the bay to the other. "Conrad Hauser, are you in here?"

The training company barracks echoed with stark emptiness, reflecting the voice of Buck Sergeant Henry Dobbs back and forth as he squinted to see through the blackness. Dobbs was a nineteen-year-old from New York City. Tall and lanky, with dark hair and a tanned complexion, the soldier didn’t look like he was tough enough to endure Special Forces training, but he had made it as a member of Buck Sergeant Conrad Hauser’s trainee class.

At the far end of the company bay, a dark form stirred on the upper bunk of one of the cookie cutter Army bed racks. The shadow ran a hand through his head of close-cropped blond hair before groaning in protest.

"Hauser!" Dobbs yelled. "Come on! It’s Magic Monday! You can’t sleep through graduation day!"

Hauser rolled in his bunk, covering his entire head with his single thin pillow and finding that it didn’t filter out Dobbs’ loud voice, complete with thick Brooklyn accent.

"Five more minutes, Mom," Hauser groaned in a low, tired tone. "What time is it?"

"It’s oh-five-thirty, old buddy," Dobbs said, feeling for one of the bunkroom’s light switches before crossing the barracks. "Did you honestly think you were gonna get more than two hours of sleep after passing that final training evolution?"

"Fuck you, Dobbs," Hauser snarled, as the sterile white light from the barracks room’s overhead lights pierced his fatigued eyelids. "Your team was one of the first to kick off. Leave me alone; I just got in from humping twenty extra miles because the instructors wanted to drag my ass through the dirt and make me earn that damned beret with blood and sweat."

"That’s what you get for being the toughest sonufabitch in the course," Dobbs said with a laugh. He dodged a swat from one of Hauser’s fists before pulling the thin sheet and blanket off his buddy’s rack. "C’mon, Conrad. There’s still time for chow before we have to really get to work. The rest of the training company’s already out and about."

"I’ll bet they’ve all been laid out on some curb, drunk as skunks," Hauser whispered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and snapping to alertness. "Or else, the county sheriff’s office in Fayetteville has a few extra customers in the drunk tank."

"Nah, they’re all in the mess hall chugging down the coffee and taking advantage of Cookie’s special recipe for shit on a shingle," Dobbs said. "We’d better haul ass before it’s all gone."

Sergeant Hauser swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, taking a moment to himself to gaze at the tattered picture of his mother that was taped to the metal frame. He felt a sense of comfort every time he saw her face, smiling at him through the image. He was doing it all for her, to make her feel that her son was just as good a soldier as his father was.

Hauser had graduated from Infantry Basic at the very top of his class, serving as a squad leader from almost the first week in training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He went on to the shortened Advanced Infantry program at Fort Benning, which was being run in less time because troops were badly needed to fight in Vietnam.

Acceptance to Fort Benning’s jump school came next, before Hauser’s application to attend Special Forces training in North Carolina was accepted. His line of successes matched the rapid rise in grade to Sergeant, and the nineteen-year-old expected to see his first rocker before shipping out to his field unit assignment. Even though the hard-nosed instructors in the Special Forces School didn’t show it, they all knew he showed promise.

Sliding off the edge of the bunk bed, Hauser dropped to the floor with a soft thud and trudged the few steps over to his locker. It took a few tries on the combination lock before he was able to get to his uniforms. The tired sergeant instinctively reached for a fresh set of OG-107 cotton utilities before Dobbs reached an arm into the locker to guide Hauser’s hand over to the neatly-pressed Class A dress uniform that hung on one end of the garment bar.

"It’s dress up day, Conrad," Dobbs crooned in a mock female voice. "You have to look nice for the grown-ups!"

-xxx-

_  
_

Yeah, you guessed it. Henry "Doggie" Dobbs was one of my first best friends in the Army. He got the nickname "Doggie" from me, because he dogged me constantly through training. We became fast friends in Infantry Basic and somehow found a way to stay together for the two years it took us to reach the end of Special Forces School.

I hadn’t realized for a long time, why Doggie and I stuck together like glue. I never had a sibling, at least not before my mom remarried. At least that was why I treasured my friendship with Doggie Dobbs.

Master Sergeant Joseph Falcone, my stepfather, was a Special Forces man too. He was serving in the bad bush between 1960 and ’62, already an old hat infantryman and Airborne Ranger from Korea. Joe came home because of a ‘golden bullet’ from a Viet Minh sniper back in the day. He was fighting when only a few hundred Americans were involved in a covert war in Vietnam, taking over from the French after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Joe and Mom had Vincent almost right away, pretty close to a year after I left for the Army. They were married while I was in Infantry Basic and they paid me a visit there instead of taking a honeymoon.

I never thought in my wildest dreams that Vince would follow his big half-brother into Special Forces some twenty years later. We haven’t always seen eye to eye since he got his appointment to the G. I. Joe Team, but Vince was as rock-steady in combat as Doggie Dobbs had been when the two of us were tight. Vince will be a good officer, as long as he keeps learning the right way from me.

As it turned out, Doggie Dobbs had it worse than me growing up. The Army became his family, and I was about the closest thing to a brother that he knew. I didn’t mind. Doggie and I helped each other through the rough times and we shared the happy ones.

-xxx-

Hauser showered quickly in the large common bath and shower room that the training company shared. Dobbs stood just outside the stall, continuing to talk whether Hauser was actually listening to him or not.

"You know, Conrad," Dobbs said over the sound of the cascading hot water. "I was an orphan, growing up in New York City. Before the Army made an honest man outta me, I was livin’ off the charity of the soup kitchens and any church that would keep its doors open for overnighters. The Holy Cross orphanage in Brooklyn only took care of me until I was twelve, and I sure made it hard for them to want to keep me around."

"Let me guess," Hauser said from inside the shower, rinsing off the last few suds from his toned and muscular body. "You were taking every passer-by in sight with Three Card Monte or the shell game, right?"

"Worse," Dobbs said. "I used to roll people in Central Park in the middle of the night for their wallets. I got caught too much for the orphanage to want to stay responsible for me. And the city’s child welfare service was too overworked to want to deal with me."

"I used to fight a lot with the other guys in my school," Hauser said. "My mom got called into my principal’s office a lot when I was caught at it."

"Yeah," Dobbs said sadly. "You’ve had life too soft, you goody-two-shoes. At least you had a family to go home to. I regret a lot of what I was into back then."

Hauser reached for an olive green terrycloth towel and wrapped himself up in it. "Well," he said, "you have me to keep you honest now."

"I sure do," Dobbs replied. "I don’t think I would’ve made it this far without your help. I really appreciate it, man."

"What else is a buddy for?" Hauser asked, walking past Dobbs to return to his bunk and put together his Class A’s.

-xxx-

__

Graduation Day.

The day my training company became full fledged Special Forces Operators.

The public liked to call us Green Berets, the press called us whatever they wanted, and so did most of the brass that haunted the operation at Bragg. None of us really gave a shit what anyone called us, so we didn’t bother reminding people that a Green Beret was a colored hat and we were something else. At least we resented the hippies that drifted around Fayetteville on occasion that called us ‘baby killers’.

We just wanted to get our qualifications and finally be out of the Uwharrie National Forest, which had been our stomping grounds for the last several months.

Since I was about to graduate at the top of my trainee class, the staff officers told me that I had my choice of assignments. Although it was likely that my background and natural language fluency automatically put me on the list for priority deployment to the 7th U.S. Army in Frankfurt, Germany, I sort of wanted to go to Vietnam. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I seriously considered it. Somewhere way back, where only dreams and nightmares dared to tread. You get me?

What was that I said about hanging around the Three Sisters or getting tanked up in Fulda? Oh yeah, it wasn’t such a bad way to serve, especially if Doggie Dobbs’ request for a European posting was approved too.

Let me tell you, Army life is never what you expect it to be. Murphy’s Laws of War were about to bite Dobbs and me a big chunk in the ass.

-xxx-

Hauser and Dobbs crossed the broad expanse of buildings and paved roadways that constituted Fort Bragg, departing from the specially fenced-in compound for the JFK Special Warfare Center to head for the base’s central parade grounds. The men wore standard Infantry dress greens, already trimmed out with a nicely growing set of "fruit salad", the colored ribbons and awards each soldier wore on his chest.

"So, old buddy," Dobbs said after looking both ways to cross a busy roadway. "Are you looking forward to that leave time the personnel hermits said we were being authorized? What do you plan to do with that primo time, huh?"

"I was thinking of going home, Doggie," Hauser said. "My mom and stepdad are still in Saint Louis, and I have a little half-brother that I’ve never seen yet. The travel office said that if I took my leave time right up to the date my new orders are in force, I can travel home on the government’s dime, since I would be flying out from there to join my new post."

"Me, I was thinking about saving the leave time for after I got my orders and shipped out," Dobbs said. "I told you that I really don’t have anyone to go home to."

"Have they cut your orders yet?" Hauser asked. "Some of the brass said it was a good bet that Europe was in my future."

A beaming smile crossed Dobbs’ face when he heard the news. "Great!" he exclaimed. "I’m on the short list for 7th Army too! I think the brass figured out that if they knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t break us up as a team."

"So, why don’t you come home with me to Saint Louis?" Hauser suggested. "You don’t have any place to go, and we’ve been like brothers for the past two years. I don’t think my mom or Joe would mind setting an extra place at the dinner table for a couple weeks."

Dobbs stopped in his tracks and turned to face Hauser. For a second, the Brooklynite’s tough exterior almost softened and a tear formed in one eye. "You would do that for me, Conrad? Take me in like a brother?"

Hauser took Dobbs’ hand into his and shook it firmly. "We’re a team, remember? What’s mine is yours."

Doggie Dobbs clapped Hauser on the shoulder and smiled. "Thanks, Conrad," he said. "That means a lot to me."

The two pals joined the other thirty-two men in their Special Forces training company that had assembled on the Fort Bragg parade grounds for graduation. The class had started with almost two hundred in the company. And for those last thirty-four, the arduous trials that had gotten them to graduation day were truly the worst the Army could devise.

-xxx-

__

…Most of the lucky washouts from the JFK Special Warfare Center classes simply got an RTU, or return to unit order. They went back to the Infantry, Cavalry or Field Artillery, or whatever unit they came in from, to serve out the remainder of their enlistment periods. Many of them got stuck on planes bound for Vietnam, to meet up with their old units as replacements for the wounded or dead.

The ones that were dropped for medical reasons almost always received Section Eight medical discharges soon after leaving Bragg. The trainers found every conceivable way to break the ones without the brass balls to go the distance. And they didn’t pull any punches.

The graduating class had been advised on Graduation Day that three members of our company, the first three RTU’s issued from our training company’s ranks, had gone on to Vietnam and were already dead, thanks to the 1969 Tet Offensive. Graduation Day was a somber affair for all the men that received their green berets, me included.

-xxx-

The graduation ceremony was small, attended by a few families that were able to make it out to North Carolina. Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs stood next to each other in the second rank of graduates, just inside the cluster enough for the colonel in charge of the training not to notice them moving around a little too much when they should’ve been standing at parade rest.

Dobbs was just shuffling his feet from side to side and trying not to fall asleep standing up. Although he had gotten more sleep than Hauser after the pre-graduation tactical exercise the night before, fatigue was finally catching up to him.

Hauser, on the other hand, was scanning the crowd of visitors carefully, trying to pick his mother or stepfather’s face out of the small ocean of people. He had hoped beyond hope that his mother was okay to travel with baby Vincent, although one letter from Joe Falcone had oddly alluded to the fact that mother and baby weren’t having an easy time of their first few months together.

__

At least when I go home on leave, Hauser thought to himself, to try to shake off the boredom. _I can find out what’s going on with Mom and baby Vincent._

The Colonel in charge of the JFK Special Warfare Center wrapped up his speechmaking for the more illustrious of the spectators, and to the relief of the newly frocked graduates, made the presentation of the green berets quite brief. The top four members of the training company, including both Hauser and Dobbs, were recognized for their achievements and promoted to Staff Sergeants, amid the roaring cheers of the crowd.

And then, the hammer dropped.

"Now that the graduation ceremony has concluded," the Colonel said into his microphone. "We can get down to some serious business. I know a lot of you have been looking forward to planning some leave time, or selected your first postings in the Special Forces. However, I have some news."

"The staff has just received a directive from the Department of the Army, indicating that our forces in the Republic of Vietnam, despite being involved in a draw-down, are continuing to suffer massive casualties due to North Vietnamese military actions against the ARVN. The damage to our remaining formations, after three withdrawal phases, has affected the Special Forces advisors and instructors in country significantly. Those soldiers are still valiantly training the ARVN units and local villages to defend themselves against the Communists, for when American forces withdraw completely."

A collective gasp left the mouths of the training company’s members, which was joined by concerned sounds from the gathered family members in the reviewing stands.

"Therefore," the Colonel continued. "By emergency order of the President, all leaves have been cancelled. You men will remain here at Fort Bragg for one week to receive Vietnam field issue equipment and weapons, and will take an intensive weapons familiarization course. Seven days from now, all of you will board a priority flight from the Pope Air Force Base Green Ramp, to fly direct to Tan Son Nhut Air Base, outside of Saigon. From there, you will be divided up as replacements among the elements of the 5th Special Forces Group or other priority assignments within the Military Assistance Command – Vietnam. Your tour will be approximately twelve months, if you survive that long in country. There will be no other relocations and all requested first postings have already been rescinded."

The Colonel waited for the information to sink in for everyone. Sergeants Dobbs and Hauser just gave each other simple glances in their peripheral vision and shrugged their shoulders imperceptibly.

"For those of you with guests at this graduation, you’ll have the remainder of today to spend with them," the Colonel said. "For those of you who don’t, I strongly suggest getting on the phones and contacting your immediate relatives by the end of today. I wish I had better news."

The Colonel’s face saddened a bit, since he was one of the lucky survivors of Vietnam to come home and stay in the Army to work at the JFK SW Center. "Listen here, all of you soldiers. This is no bullshit. The average life expectancy of a new replacement butter bar taken under fire on his first combat patrol was _sixteen to twenty minutes_. Enlisted men fared no better, since there were a lot more to go around."

Many of the new operators shifted in their places and their eyes darted around to connect with their buddies.

"Vietnam is an organ grinder," the Colonel warned, "chewing up fine men and spitting out wasted souls and corpses. The only way to survive is to listen to the veterans, trust in your buddies, and to fight like you’ve never fought before. Sleep with one eye open at all times, and pray to God that the firebases supporting your fighting camp have good artillerymen on the guns. I wish all of you young troopers the best of luck, because you mud-eaters are gonna fuckin’ need it. Dismissed."

-xxx-

__

God, I wished that my mom wasn’t in the stands listening to the Colonel at that very moment. Even with Joe around to give her moral support and trying to explain away the serious words the Colonel had said, I don’t think she would’ve kept her cool. Just because I couldn’t pick them out, didn’t mean that they weren’t waiting to rush down from the stands onto the field with the other families, stricken with grief about my orders.

Thankfully, Joe and my mom didn’t make the trip after all. It was easier to get on the telephone later, and tell Joe first, so that he could break the news to Mom and calm her down. It still made my heart break when I heard her crying on the other end of the line, while at the same time trying to nurse Vincent through a tough night of teething, or the "terrible twos", or whatever it was that was afflicting him at the time.

But I made sure that I called home. I didn’t want Mom or Joe to be in the dark, and Joe was a good guy about it. He even said just about the same things the Colonel did about how to survive the ‘Nam. I just hoped that I would be good enough to make it count.

Doggie Dobbs stood by me while I made the call. He didn’t have any family to seek out; nobody in a quiet home someplace in New York to tell him that they loved him and wanted him to come home alive. He and I planned on taking out a one-night pass to go into Fayetteville and get smashed over a whiskey bottle, to drown our sorrows one last time in The Land of the Free.

Doggie Dobbs was the first soldier – no, strike that – the first person other than my mom to ever see me cry. I wasn’t the first one to see him do it, but he said I was the only one who he trusted enough to cry in front of. I didn’t know what to say.

-xxx-


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Two

Arriving In Country

-xxx-

__

Somewhere around the first of June, nineteen hundred and seventy, Doggie Dobbs and I made the trek overseas from Bragg by plane. We were all on a United 707 that the Air Force had commandeered for troop transportation. Can you imagine? There were only forty-four guys, all of us wet behind the ears snake-eaters. And they sent a whole jet airliner for us… complete with pretty airline stewardesses and all!

Wow! For a second, I thought we were flying to war in style! All of us probably looked out of place, with our OD green utilities on and sleeping with our packs and M-16 rifles propped up in the adjacent seats. I’m willing to bet half the guys took up smoking, just to make points with the blonde who was offering us cigarettes and refreshments during the flight. Me, I prefer redheads, as you well know…

Unfortunately, the airliner didn’t take us all the way. We stopped on the West Coast and switched to a large Military Airlift Command C-141 transport for the run into Saigon. And boy, was it a run! We flew for damn near twenty hours straight, stopping off once in Hawaii for gas, sandwiches and pineapples, and once at Clark Air Base in the Philippines for gas and some sort of watery local stew. At both airfields, a crew of nasty-looking Military Policemen kept everyone from sneaking off the transport. Can you imagine?

The pilots claimed that the cops were for our protection, from peaceniks, terrorists and the like. I still believe that they were gonna shoot anyone who decided that the war wasn’t for them and preferred to take a little island getaway instead.

Air Force pilots seem to always be able to lie to grunts with a straight face. Just ask Ace. Or all the Joes he cheated at poker.

None of us liked the trip on the Starlifter. We rode in freakin’ cargo nets, fer Chrissakes! And we slept on our packs, ‘cause that was all there was, other than the steel floor! Maybe that was an Army plan too… they made us really uncomfortable on the ride over, so that we’d land so angry we could piss fire and kill every slant-eyed Commie in sight.

Yeah, I felt that way when the C-141 went wheels-down at Tan Son Nhut. At least, I felt that way when I wasn’t dry heaving my guts out in the airplane’s bathroom, after the realization hit me that I was actually going to war.

Sure, you’re gonna tell me that I’m some natural combat soldier. Yeah, I could be a real-life John Rambo, even. And I say you’re full of shit. When I started out, I wasn’t a natural born killer. The only things I killed were insects on the sidewalk, canvas sacks full of hay on the Fort Benning bayonet courses, or fellow trainees during hand to hand combat training. And those trainees were 

"simulated" _deaths._

__

I personally think that if a soldier is faced with the choice and doesn’t have to kill, then he performed his job better than if he did take a life. But that’s just my humble, professional military opinion. You can take it or leave it.

-xxx-

Tan Son Nhut Air Base

Saigon, Republic of Vietnam

02 June, 1970

The American airbase at Saigon’s former international airport was as busy as any domestic commercial airfield. Planes of every shape and size maneuvered around the taxiways and among the clutches of tall, spreading palms that filled the unused grassy spaces.

From the smallest Piper Cub, used for aerial reconnaissance, to roaring Phantom, Thunderchief and Super Sabre fighters, and the large transports, everything moved at a steady pace. Quickly and efficiently, but not outside of safety standards.

However, there was one major and noticeable difference about Tan Son Nhut. As the traffic moved around the sprawling airbase, the larger aircraft, mainly American second-line airliners pressed into troop transport service and USAF cargo planes, always rolled around the field escorted by squat, green M-151 "MUTT" utility trucks mounting medium machine guns.

The new Special Forces men crowded around the handful of porthole-style windows in the C-141’s cargo bay, elbowing and shoving each other innocently for a chance to peek out at the "Jewel of Southeast Asia" and get their first good look at Vietnam. What they ended up seeing was the vehicles of their flight’s armed escort, manned by tired Air Force security policemen. The airmen looked like they had started out young and aged many years in one single tour of duty.

Grim-faced and alert, the escorts seemed to be looking everywhere at once, training their guns to shoot on sight. Somehow, it appeared to Staff Sergeant Hauser that the men were on a hair trigger. One false move or a sound out of place, and they’d be popping caps.

"Holy--" Staff Sergeant Dobbs whispered, pressing his face against the porthole window and shouldering Hauser to the side. "This is some serious shit we’ve landed in. Do you think the VC are about to invade?"

"Didn’t you pay attention to the State Department briefing before we left Bragg, Doggie?" Hauser asked in an exasperated tone. "This is a guerilla war. The enemy is probably already around us."

Dobbs grabbed his M-16, yanking on the charging handle once and waving it around like a Hollywood cowboy. "Well, let’s jus’ see what these Vietnamese do when they run into The Duke and his sidekick!" he exclaimed, drawing glares from some of the other men. "We’ll take all of ‘em on and come out smilin’!"

Hauser swatted the end of Doggie’s rifle barrel, pushing it in a safe direction. He noticed that there was a magazine slid into place on his buddy’s weapon. "Henry! Put that fuckin’ thing down, troop!" he growled. "And what is all this noise you’re talking about?"

"You’re The Duke, and I’m your sidekick, Conrad," Dobbs said. "Don’t tell me that you just forgot about liking John Wayne movies as a kid!"

Hauser’s mind was surely farthest from his childhood memories. He was thinking more about life and death than the fictional adventures of John Wayne. Even though he still fancied the nickname in the back of his head. In the places only dreams and nightmares dared to tread.

Eventually, the C-141 Starlifter found its assigned parking spot on the Tan Son Nhut apron, and the whine of its turbine engines diminished to a whisper. A young Air Force loadmaster, who normally hid near the cockpit and kept the fresh coffee flowing in the plane’s tiny galley, strode past the Special Forces men, tapping silently on the top of his head while talking with the cockpit on a small intercom headset. He was signaling for the soldiers to don their government-issued, M-1 steel combat helmets.

Tucking his green beret into one of the fatigue uniform’s cargo pockets, Hauser felt the smooth helmet and its cotton camouflage cover before resting the liner onto his head. He didn’t bother to buckle the chinstrap, because the trainers at Bragg said it would take longer to help someone who was shot in the head by a VC sniper if the medics couldn’t get the steel pot off.

With his gear in place, Hauser found his own M-16 rifle, charged it with a full magazine, and then slung his combat rucksack over one shoulder and an Army duffel bag over the other. He chose to keep the rifle in both hands instead of slinging it, just in case.

-xxx-

__

I’m The Duke, and Doggie was my sidekick. Truer words were never spoken, I guess.

We walked off the Starlifter’s cargo ramp together, feeling the warmth of the sun touching our newbie skin. I was willing to make a bet that Vietnam would only be idyllic during two times in our tour. Once when we got there, and once when we left. Everything in between would either be dusty, stinking fighting camps or steamy jungle. And it would surely stay hot… hot… hot!

The one thing that struck me the most – and it probably struck every replacement over there the same way – was the sight of the soldiers marching out to catch the "Freedom Bird". The C-141 we had arrived on was taking a load of returning soldiers back to the Philippines on their first leg OUT of the war zone.

Do you think the men looked happy to be going? Hell, yeah! They looked downright morose! Each and every one of them was just like the Colonel described. They were soulless shells of men, worn down from fighting and seeing their buddies killed. Their eyes were sunk deep, and they stared off into nowhere. The ones that still talked, and bragged, were chiding us.

"Don’t let the VC shoot off your balls!" one of them had said to Doggie. I got a colorful tidbit about Vietnamese whores from a black guy who was stoned on something. I didn’t envy them for going home so much as I envied the fact that they found a way to make it through their tours.

Many of them didn’t get on that Starlifter unscathed. A couple hobbled on crutches, or swung partially amputated limbs around in the air, shouting warnings about the punji stakes or land mines. Were they trying to scare us, or save us? If you ask me, I think both.

-xxx-

Someone from the Tan Son Nhut ground staff led the arriving Special Forces men across the paved tarmac of the USAF parking ramp towards a squat, concrete reception building. The small cluster of men still marched in a tight, neat line, two abreast, like they had been taught in Infantry Basic. They passed groups of tired, doggedly worn out soldiers that trudged about in more of a loose gaggle than anything, lacking discipline and ignoring orders from the military policemen to move in an orderly manner.

Without any sort of warning, a single explosion rocked the parking ramp, sending every person in sight scurrying for cover behind ground equipment or vehicles. In the space of a few seconds, a mechanical siren began to sing its low warble across the air, and anyone with a weapon had it out and at the ready. The arriving soldiers were the slowest to get behind cover, many of them glancing at each other instead of worrying about where to point their rifles.

The sound of a second explosion rolled across the airfield. Hauser and Dobbs ducked behind a parked jeep and looked for the fastest route to the concrete building. Following their drills, the men scanned the area to seek out anything suspicious. They kept the sights of their rifles pointed in the direction their eyes were looking and itchy fingers fumbled at their rifle triggers. The low, oscillating siren sound was replaced by a higher-pitched AWOOGAH from the concrete reception building.

"We have zips in the wire!" a voice said over a loudspeaker, from parts unknown. "Zips in the wire! All reaction force teams to sector six! Incoming mortar attack!"

With the roar of gasoline engines, a motley convoy of vehicles lined up from every direction. M-151 jeeps, boxy armored personnel carriers, and strange-looking airfield defense armored cars formed up quickly and roared off in the direction of the supposed enemy movement, bristling with guns. Distant pops and thumps signified the American units’ engagement with the elusive Viet Cong assault force.

Staff Sergeant Hauser stood up from behind his cover and shouted to a passing vehicle’s commander, asking if he and Dobbs could help.

"Negatorie, new guy!" the M-706 armored car’s commander replied. "They don’t have death paper on you yet! Go inside the building and get processed, slick!" Any other words the commander might’ve had were drowned out by the armored car’s diesel engine, growling as it carried the vehicle away in a swirl of thick, brown dust.

"How the hell did that guy know we were fresh meat for the grinder?" Dobbs asked, shrugging his shoulders as the ground staffer waved for the men to move on, albeit more cautiously while the firefight raged surreally in sector six.

"We probably look the part, walking in neat lines and wearing clean uniforms," Hauser said, tugging at Doggie’s sleeve to urge him on. "Let’s go see where we’re going, and fill out some of this supposed ‘death paper’, okay?"

"Whatever you say, Duke," Dobbs replied with a smile.

-xxx-

__

I wrote myself a note on the very day I arrived in country with Doggie Dobbs. It was my fourth or fifth entry into this pseudo-diary that I’ve been keeping since. You wanna know what I scrounged up to put my thoughts down on?

You guessed it. I stole an extra copy of the Army’s standard "Next of Kin" update form. It was the "death paper" that the armored car commander was talking about. I stole an extra one because I goofed while filling my original out. Instead of writing my mom’s name and address, and Joe’s name, I had unconsciously scrawled "Staff Sergeant Henry Dobbs, Special Forces Camp, Republic of Vietnam".

I think Doggie had to re-write his too. I can’t remember for sure, but I seem to recall him writing my name down. Not like he had anyone else to put on the paper, anyway. I guess he made something up to make the personnel hermit happy.

-xxx-


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Three

First Assignment

-xxx-

__

So, there Doggie and I were – in the Republic of Vietnam. As it turned out, four of us were assigned to the 2nd MIKE Force, based out of Pleiku. The unit was the largest Special Forces outfit in the II Corps Tactical Zone, committed to provide special reconnaissance for higher headquarters, and to train a support force that could deploy to any besieged camp or strategic hamlet within its area of responsibility.

We were sent in on the ‘shit hook’, a CH-47 twin-rotor cargo helicopter that routinely ferried supplies and personnel from Saigon to the combat sectors in Pleiku. A brigade of the 4th Infantry Division was based east of the small regional capital, and the 7th Squadron of the 17th Air Cavalry operated from a rudimentary air base that a number of smaller engineer and medical units also called home.

From the air, Vietnam didn’t look so tough. We flew over sprawling squares cut into the green, fertile ground, where the local village communities planted their rice paddies and then flooded them until the food staple finished growing. Scattered black and brown shapes – oxen and water buffalo – moved around the rice paddies, some of them drawing hand plows guided by wizened Vietnamese farmers, wearing their traditional thatched round hats.

Those hats looked like flipped-over woks to Doggie and me. I half-joked to Doggie as we passed over a tiny hamlet of bamboo houses on stilts, that the locals must love to eat, if they wear their cook pots conveniently on their heads.

Obviously the other guys in the ‘shit-hook’ didn’t see the humor in it.

Good thing I had Doggie to talk to. The two of us rookies must’ve stood out like sore thumbs.

-xxx-

The squat, green-painted CH-47 Chinook swept in low over the thick overgrowths of vegetation in a sector of undeveloped land near Pleiku. It passed over the 2nd MIKE Force’s main base, which looked like some of the typical fighting camps that Duke and Doggie saw in their pre-deployment briefings. Except for the fact that the Pleiku camp was on steroids.

Set up to help protect a large concentration of refugees from Viet Cong insurgents in the surrounding provincial towns and villages, the 2nd MIKE Force base was nearly a small city. It had an inner area, which had at least two rings of security. The defensive earthworks, trenches, and interlaced concertina wire perimeters were so thickly constructed, they were clearly visible shapes from the air.

The inner area served the American contingent of the force’s home. Command and control, supplies, a medical clinic or surgical station, signal relay facilities, barracks, ammunition dumps and armories would be in the very center of the camp, within that innermost defense. Pleiku also had the amenity of its own helicopter pad within the inner sanctum’s cluster of structures.

Beyond that, a ring of half-buried shelters housed refugees and dependents of the locally recruited Vietnamese and ethnic fighters. A number of firing ranges and pieces of equipment erected by the Special Forces were around for combat training.

Also interspersed among the circle of shelters were the dozen crescent moon-shaped firing pits of the camp’s most prized defensive combat system – the battery of 81mm mortars and their well-drilled Montagnard and Nung crews. Led by a team of Special Forces men in the camp’s fire direction hooch, the mortars could rain fire and steel on anything that tried to beat their way into the perimeter.

The outer rings of protection were expansive, despite having broad dirt roads and trails running through them. Long, zigzagging slit trenches had been dug in several echelons, followed by networks of Claymore minefields covering the trails, and thick defensive earthworks. There were also the invisible defenses, such as ADSID seismic detectors for early warning, ambush patrols of CIDG fighters, and extra ordnance and mantraps built inside the tree line to discourage enemy movement.

Additional bunkers, which looked a lot like the housing structures with stacks of sandbags for reinforcement, were used to bunk the indigenous fighters that weren’t on patrol, the camp’s dedicated defense company, and elements of their American advisors. The camp’s defenders also engaged the VC from these protected hooches before spreading out into the trench networks to continue the fight.

Beyond the camp defense bunkers, Army engineers had purposefully cleared away the ground with giant tree-crushing vehicles and earthmovers to more than a thousand meters’ distance, before any tree line or cover was available to an attacker. This measure was to force the enemy to stay away or risk launching human waves of charging VC against the camp’s daunting firepower capacity, which could cut scores of them down as they crossed the open and featureless ground.

Apparently, several sectors of the camp had been recently attacked. Teams of people, civilians and soldiers alike, were working on the ground to reconstruct some caved-in hooches, erecting simple walls of corrugated metal backed by neat lines of sandbags. The sprawled out corpses of a few dozen people were lying out in the open, slumped over their fighting positions or impaled on the barbed wire and punji stake mantraps that were randomly dug around the camp perimeter. Neither Hauser or Dobbs could tell on whose side the dead were from the air, but they didn’t look any less frightening.

The "shit hook" (local slang for the CH-47 transport) descended quickly and flared for landing, using a rapid deceleration tactic taught to many of the assault helicopter pilots that often had to bring their aircraft into hot landing zones under enemy fire. The violent maneuver caused Hauser and Dobbs to practically roll out of their seats, and Dobbs began to turn green as his stomach wanted to retch.

"Easy, Doggie," Hauser said, helping his buddy back into the sling seats. Dobbs nodded his head silently that he was okay, and the two men settled back into their places while the veteran troops on board snickered derisively. The two replacements that were seated towards the rear cargo ramp of the chopper, where the maneuver could be felt the most, turned their lunches into a puddle on the transport’s slick floor, dousing their brand-new jungle boots in the smelly, multi-colored, half-digested concoctions.

The CH-47 settled onto the Pleiku camp’s landing pad, lowering its ramp right away. A stream of civilians and indigenous recruits, dressed in a motley collection of uniform pieces mixed with normal clothes, clamored around the cargo ramp, helping to rapidly unload the supplies. The replacements and operators returning to the Pleiku camp filed out of a passenger loading door, marching right into the waiting arms of the unit’s top kick, who was directing all of the activity.

"Replacements!" the top sergeant, MSGT Harold Draper, shouted in a forceful bellow. "Center up on me, you fuckin’ turds! Get your slimy, newbie asses and that rat-shit Stateside gear over here where I kin look at ya!"

MSGT Draper was a bear of a man, an obvious take-no-shit character. Even with a set of loose, field-worn fatigues on, the bulging muscles in his chest seemed to spring out. He had meaty, hairy fists that were planted firmly on his tapered hips. He reminded Hauser and Dobbs of their worst nightmare in Infantry Basic.

The replacement Special Forces men assembled in front of the master sergeant, who promptly jabbed at them in their guts and began to circle around them, tearing their combat packs off their backs and dumping out the neatly stored contents.

"First rule in the field, _shits-for-brains_ ," Draper shouted at the men from behind. "If you fucks look anything like a formation, then some Victor Charles sniper’s gonna turn the guy you’re standing before into a fine red mist! Do I look like an officer ta ya?"

MSGT Draper stalked around the group and centered his gaze on Hauser, who tried to relax from the position of attention. "Well, slick?" he bellowed. "Do ah look like a _fuckin’ officer_ ta ya?"

Hauser began to stammer out a reply, his youthful voice trying to stay firm. "N- n- no, Master Sergeant…" he said softly. His answer was rewarded with a hard jab to the midsection, which put him down in the slippery, clay-encrusted mud at his feet.

"I don’ fuckin’ care what you turds were told back in the world," Draper growled. "Around these parts, if you even look like you’re talkin’ ta officers, you make them automatic targets. So, no salutin’ in the open. There'll be no standin’ at attention or in some sorta military parade formation. None of that _namby-pamby bullshit_ you learned in Infantry Basic or Jump School is the SOP here. In this post, we deal with survival. _We survive, or we die._ An’ we Special Forces don’t die needlessly. We’re too important to this war effort."

Draper leaned down and wrapped his beefy fist around a good portion of Hauser’s shirt, drawing the newbie up onto his feet. "You didn’t answer my question, slick. Do ah still look like a fuckin’ officer ta ya?"

Hauser shook off the dazed feeling in his head at being knocked around and looked Draper in the eyes with a cold stare. "If you looked like a _fuckin’ officer_ , I’d offer ya a rubber so ya wouldn’t get the clap. You look like a scumbag non-com ta me!"

Draper’s fingers tightened, clutching Hauser’s uniform tightly and threatening to cut off his windpipe. Then he suddenly loosened his grip and dusted Hauser’s shoulders off. "Ha!" Draper shouted with a belly laugh. "Ah think ah’m gonna like you, kid."

The master sergeant pointed over to the camp command post, which was about fifty meters from the helicopter pad, in an unmarked hooch. "Let’s go pay a visit to the real officer around here, you rejects from the repple-depple. An’ quit standin’ so tall; the shit-hook’s gonna cut your brain bags clean off!"

Following the dark-haired, human monstrosity, Hauser and Dobbs trudged through the damp Pleiku morning air towards their part of the Vietnam War.

-xxx-

__

So I guess for all of the uninformed, it’s time to explain a little bit more about the 2nd Mobile Strike Force (or MIKE Force). They were sort of like a coordination center for the Special Forces teams that worked their magic throughout the II Corps Tactical Zone (II CTZ).

You see, the way Special Forces were organized in the ‘Nam was rooted in the twelve to sixteen man A-Team. These were the guys who went out to distant hamlets and villages to recruit and train the civilians to fight against the VC and NVA as the bad guys tried to force Communism upon their way of life.

Of the dozen or so A-Teams that worked II CTZ, they were rotated in and out of action by a couple of higher headquarters, akin to a company-level command. These were called B-Detachments, or B-Teams. Logistical or service support units were often attached to the B-Teams, and they occupied a more fixed fighting camp.

B-Teams were responsible for combat support of the A-Teams in the field, including coordination of insertion, air support, extraction and artillery fire from nearby conventional units. The 7/17 Air Cav was a well-used partner of the 2nd MIKE Force, since a lot of rescues had to happen quickly, and the only way to get places fast in the ‘Nam was by riding the ubiquitous UH-1 "slick".

Certain B-Teams also directly controlled the more clandestine reconnaissance and assassination operations our guys were going out on. Shh! That was supposed to be a secret!

The highest command for the Special Forces was at the battalion level. There was one C-Detachment per Corps Tactical Zone, which coordinated the activities of assigned A and B Teams, also seeing to their general and logistical needs.

The commanders at the B-Detachments normally spent time training replacements before putting them out with A-Teams that were already formed and knew how to work together independently. They also often had their own resources that required Special Forces men to lead in combat actions.

At the MIKE Force, we had almost five light infantry battalions’ worth of CIDG and ARVN personnel, including an elite ARVN Airborne Ranger outfit. These units were used to relieve the A-Teams that got themselves into too much trouble in the field, or covered the safe extractions of special reconnaissance missions.

We also had small squads called Roadrunner Teams, which was a fire team of four American operators advising roughly ten or twenty CIDG guys. They would work together for a long time, patrolling deep into enemy zones, scouting out villages, and looking for VC tunnel systems that led to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main supply route for arms and goods coming from North Vietnam into the South.

Now, you might be thinking the same thing that I was. If you put a B-Detachment in charge of five or six battalions of local troops, wouldn’t they call that a Brigade? Maybe so, as far as the ARVN might be concerned. In reality, the American portion of a B-Team and its controlled A-Teams might barely number enough men to flesh out two rifle companies – that’s only a couple hundred guys.

The reason why the CTZ decided to keep the MIKE Forces consolidated together was because of the special training requirements the fighters had, and that they were rather difficult to coordinate with conventional American mechanized and air-mobile forces in major operations. The regular American troops were unaccustomed to the language barriers that were involved, and the CIDG fighters had no idea what large-scale, combined-arms actions were all about.

But, I have to tell you something. Those damn CIDG guys were highly motivated, kick ass dudes. They knew the forests, trails and jungles we patrolled to the point of being able to tell when the smallest things were out of place. And when it came down to a firefight, the CIDG fought like tigers, despite the rumors among the American regulars that the average ARVN or CIDG were cowardly, lackluster soldiers.

It was too bad that the only reason they fought was to defend themselves and their villages, or to earn the stipends the CIA and South Vietnamese government offered. The guys in any given squad often came from the same village and pooled their bounty money to buy things for the folks at home instead of for themselves. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Is there any wonder why I respect the hell outta these people?

Many of them knew very little of the Saigon government, and mistrusted the government forces just as much as they did the VC and NVA. But they liked our guys, who went out and lived among them, taking care of their needs and teaching entire families how to make a good living for their villages.

Our A-Teams ran small schools, or coerced medical and engineer units to show up to help build wells and treatment clinics. And when the Army couldn’t help, our guys rolled up their sleeves, set aside their rifles, and did it themselves. The CIDG guys had a mutual respect for the Green Berets.

Well, anyway, back to the camp. Doggie and I were about to get our first taste of what fighting the guerilla war was like, and a lot quicker than we had expected.

-xxx-

Command Post

2nd MIKE Force, Pleiku Fighting Camp

Major Mike Barnes looked up from a table made up of empty ammunition crates stacked atop one another, sighing as he took a swig from a tepid can of Coca-Cola. The latest VC attack on his camp had come from a direction that brought the pesky guerillas dangerously close to the electrical generator plant and the fuel dump of gasoline the camp needed to keep them running.

Many of his ARVN Rangers had been out on ambush patrols or learning air movement techniques with the 7/17 Air Cav. And a lot of CIDG squads had gone back to their villages temporarily, leaving a company of rookie CIDG fighters, a platoon from the camp defense company and one of his A-Teams to get blunted by the massed human wave charge. The VC had brought along portable firepower in the form of modified Russian B-40 rockets, which they were able to use to knock out one of the camp’s power generators.

The camp’s force doggedly fought the enemy off, for the umpteenth time, but Major Barnes knew that MAC-V wouldn’t appreciate his steady stream of damage reports. The REMF’s wanted results, but didn’t realize the unique problems of running a camp that seemed to have a big red bull’s eye painted around it. After taking another swig of his Coke and shaking his head dejectedly, he signed the latest communication for Saigon and set it aside to bring to the signal hooch.

Master Sergeant Draper’s voice boomed in the outer room of the command post, as the gargantuan stomped down the dirt steps, scaring aside some of the ARVN auxiliaries that took care of the maps and other papers that passed through the hooch.

"Major Barnes?" Draper said. "Are you ‘round here, sir?"

"In the back, Harry," Barnes said, dabbing at his sweaty forehead with a thin Army towel.

"Ah’ve got the latest bullet-stoppers from Saigon here ta see ya, sir," Draper said, crossing the command post room and leading the four replacements into the cramped back office where Barnes was doing his after action reports.

"Okay," Barnes replied. "I’ll talk to them for a few. You get one of those criminals you call _supply specialists_ to put together four sets of our standard ‘replacement’s issue’ gear, and find these guys a hooch to live in. I’ve got to pick which officers to dump ‘em on."

Barnes thought for a moment without even looking at the replacements that were lining up in front of his makeshift desk. "Oh, and Draper, have Supply dump a few six-packs of _piss brew_ in the medical tent’s drug freezer for the Roadrunner teams coming in tonight. I don’t care if the docs bitch and moan about it – without the number four generator, the mess tent and reefer CONEX are both out of action unless we shut down something more important to conserve the remaining three. So we have to spread out the power usage until Tommy the Wrench gets it running again tomorrow."

"You got it, sir," Draper said, adjusting a sweat rag that covered the top of his head before leaving the office.

Major Barnes’ eyes rose slowly, meeting each pair of replacement’s eyes and studying them carefully. He never changed his expression, a neutral, thin-lipped look. After he took stock of what he saw, the major finally let out a short breath and spoke to them.

"So, you kids are the new breed," the nearly forty year old career Infantry officer said. "Does Saigon expect me to start ordering diapers through Supply for you, too?"

"Nossir," the replacements chanted softly.

"Oh, so you think you’re badass killers, eh?" Barnes said. "Well, I sure intend to find out. Hand over your orders, men."

Hauser collected all four orders jackets from the replacements and presented them to Major Barnes. The major gave each one a perfunctory once-over and then nodded to himself.

"Good," the major said, to no one in particular. "They at least sent me all Weapons Specialists this time. I can teach you guys the required manuals for first aid, communications, demolitions and civic action in the field. What I can’t teach is weapons and tactics, when I have to try to turn those gooks out there into cohesive fighting units."

Barnes’ voice fell silent for a second as he considered what he wanted to say. SSGT Dobbs rocked from side to side for a moment, wondering if the major was expecting the men to say something. Hauser’s eyes became slits as he watched the major quietly.

"Okay. Here’s the deal, mud-eaters," Barnes said, setting down the orders jackets. "All of you are going to the ranges. I’m going to have you start learning all the jobs of a Special Forces man that you don’t already know. Since I have a pair of _summa cum laude_ graduates of the JFK School in my midst, Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs, you will be joining one of my Roadrunner teams. It will be coming home tonight, and going out again in three days. Two of the advisors are short-timers, and I’m pulling them out to send them home. You two characters will take their place. You’ll have seventy-two hours to learn what it takes to survive out here."

"We can handle it, sir," Dobbs blurted out, trying to puff out his chest in a display of bravado. Hauser simply stood at parade rest and listened to the major.

"I didn’t ask you a fuckin’ question, newbie!" Barnes snarled at Dobbs. "This outfit isn’t manned by glory hounds! I send assholes like that to shed blood with the Infantry! You’re going to find that being on Roadrunner means you’re not trying to pick a fight with the bad guys unless we specifically tell you to. Yeah, you’re gonna pop some caps here and there, and God help you if the enemy pops ‘em on you first. However, routine direct engagement with the enemy is not in your mission profile."

Dobbs clammed up quickly, especially when Hauser shot him a dark look and stomped on the toe of his jungle boot with the heel of his own.

Barnes caught MSGT Draper in the corner of his eye, re-entering the command post hooch. "Harry… er… Master Sergeant Draper will assign you to hooches, where you will live in camp. And he will begin to ramp you up for your assignments. I strongly suggest that you listen to every iota of what he has to say. It WILL mean your life if you don’t and end up screwing the pooch out there. Get outta here – you haven’t the time to stand slack-jawed in front of me. I’ll see Hauser and Dobbs again when your Roadrunner mission brief comes down from the Intel hooch."

Afraid to mumble, the replacements traded glances. MSGT Draper slipped into the office, with his meathooks on his hips.

"Are you slicks STILL HERE?" Major Barnes bellowed. "Get the fuck outta my sight!"

-xxx-


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Four

The Dusty Trail

-xxx-

__

Master Sergeant Draper sure did ramp us up for duty – in spades.

When Roadrunner Nine returned to Pleiku, amid a cloud of dust on the camp’s helicopter pad, they hardly looked like an organized military unit. The four American advisors wore mismatched sets of experimental U.S. woodland camouflage and commercially sold "tiger stripe" pattern fatigues.

The three Montagnard fighters that stepped off the slick wore anything that fit them comfortably, including ARVN uniform parts, old WWII Marine tropical uniforms, and whatever they came from their villages with. They all looked like a motley bunch, sunken-eyed and tired from walking a three-day and four-night deep penetration patrol. But as soon as Draper produced two six-packs of beer from the camp’s surgical squad tent, the unit appeared to relax. They knew they were as safe as they could be.

Draper introduced Doggie and me to the fire team leader and communications specialist assigned to Roadrunner Nine. We would be replacing the short-timers, a pair of weapons experts that were due to rotate home to the world. Both short-timers had three Purple Hearts waiting for them along with their transfer orders to the States. I hope Doggie and I don’t earn so many out here.

There was so much to remember… Roadrunner teams weren’t expected to slug it out with VC and NVA units, especially the kinds they routinely crossed paths with moving along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Often, the armed elements of the enemy could outnumber a Roadrunner team by ten to one. Stealth was the key to our success. We had to move quickly, fix and identify the enemy and then bring down fire from the heavens, which was something we supposedly had plenty of.

I think we re-learned to pack our kit in less than five minutes when Draper showed us a team of advisors who were preparing to go out on patrol. All of the neat goodies the Army gave us Stateside were dumped into footlockers or sent to the Supply guys to be traded with the Cavalry unit in Pleiku for more useful items.

What did we pack the most of on Roadrunner? Socks, ammo and food. That was it. Besides a standard load of mission equipment, like maps, compasses, radios, weapons and such, socks kept our feet from developing trench foot and we were told to change them often.

The typical Vietnam jungle boot let too much moisture in, and the teams often crossed rivers without the benefit of a bridge. With all the moisture around, and all the walking we did on patrol, changing to fresh socks a couple times a day helped ease the burden on our blister-sore fighting feet.

Food was the obvious second major item. With patrols running for three to five days straight and no standard re-supply in the field, we carried our canned C-Rations in our socks (which helped keep the little cans from rattling while on the march), or the new packaged "MRE" stuff carefully arranged in our rucksacks. Sometimes, we kept some chocolate bars or treats handy to leave with villagers along the way. It was supposed to be our way of keeping the locals’ hearts and minds on our side.

And ammo was the most important thing to have as much of as possible. When we loaded up, the patrol rucksacks weighed in at around eighty pounds of gear. That was probably three-quarters ammunition, already loaded in magazines. We also carried bandoleers of 40mm grenades for an M-79 launcher, or extra belts for an M-60 if the squad had one handy.

The CIDG guys carried their ammo in American WWII kit, since they were mainly armed with our old stuff to begin with. Everyone split the load of the support weapons, so that if one man went down, the whole supply of ammo wasn’t lost.

Now, if you’ve ever gone camping or hiking you’re probably wondering, "What about tents? Sleeping bags?" All that bullshit was considered an unnecessary luxury for Roadrunner patrols. Like I said, we took socks, food and ammo. We often found our own shelter in ruined villages, or asked the locals to take us into one of their hooches for the night.

In enemy-infested routes, we slept under the jungle canopy, in foxholes or just leaning against trees while one or two of us stood watch. The pantywaist Infantry can have all the other high-tech goodies; we took care of ourselves just fine out there.

So, I’ll bet you’re wondering who I started out my combat career with in Vietnam. Doggie Dobbs and I were assigned to a pair of dangerous men, to say the least.

Second Lieutenant Christopher "Candy" Wilcox was six-four and damn near two-fifty. He looked like a rail, but was strong as an ox. He started out as a Special Forces civic action sergeant, before getting a battlefield promotion and an assignment as a Roadrunner team leader. He had jet black hair, but no one could tell, because he liked to keep his head shaved bald and didn’t even show a hint of five o’clock shadow on his face. Some of the CIDG guys called him the "hairless Devil" because of his ferocity in the field.

Sergeant First Class David "Sparks" Sullivan was a shorter soldier, standing five-eight. He and I were about a half-inch apart, depending on who had the longer hair that day. Sparks didn’t speak a lot about personal stuff; he seemed to be all business, all the time. I think he was marking the days until he became a short-timer and didn’t have to patrol anymore.

As the team’s communicator, Sparks probably had to memorize a lot too, as far as radio call signs and passwords, which must’ve taken a lot of his concentration to keep straight in his head. He apparently never carried a scrap of paper that could be captured by the enemy or left behind to compromise the patrol.

Eventually, we were all supposed to get trained in local procedures for demolitions, hooch and well construction in villages, basic first aid, intelligence gathering, signaling, patrolling, and so on. But for now, Doggie and I humped the team’s support weapons. All members of the fire team carried M-177 carbines, jokingly referred to as "Mini-Mattels". They felt a lot like toys, just as much so as their M-16A1 big brothers, which the Infantry didn’t like due to jamming problems in the stubborn conditions of the ‘Nam.

I also carried the team’s M-79 "blooper", our portable, forty-millimeter fire support. Doggie carried the light machinegun, which was a shortened, Marine-style M-60, or a Stoner Mark 22, which the Navy SEAL units in country used more than we did. The Stoner was better for us, since it chambered in 5.56mm like our carbines, so we could carry more ball ammo and be able to use it in either piece, instead of trying to keep it separate.

Roadrunner Nine had come home from its last mission with only three other men, having lost most of the CIDG fighters they left with in a running firefight with a battalion of NVA commandos. Tranh Ming was the team’s ARVN interpreter, and held the rank of Corporal in their army. He had worked with Candy and Sparks for about three months.

The other two, the CIDG fighters, Duc and Hong, were Montagnards, and looked like they could chew up and spit out anything they didn’t like that came their way. But despite their toughness, they mourned the most over the loss of their squad mates.

I came to find out later, that Hong’s two younger brothers were both part of the squad during that fatal patrol. All three volunteered together to leave their little mountain village and fight the Communists. Hong told us that he tried to dissuade his brothers from volunteering, but they wanted to go to protect him.

The brothers were fiercely loyal to each other. But after that patrol, Hong had been unable to protect them and bring them back to his family. They were seventeen and fifteen years old when they died. Now, they’re just rotting, half-buried corpses in an unmarked jungle clearing, thanks to an NVA ambush. To Hong and his family, they’re heroes.

-xxx-

Helicopter Base

7th Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment

Pleiku, Republic of Vietnam

Night was falling around Pleiku. Darkness began to shroud everything in thick walls of black. Due to security and concern over increased VC and NVA probing attacks, the powerful spotlights around the Pleiku helicopter base were randomly lit or kept off. Whenever a special mission was scheduled to depart, the ready pads were left in the dark, in case the enemy was sneaking around to observe them.

A lone, green-painted UH-1 "slick" of the 7/17 Cavalry sat idling on the Pleiku ready pad, its rotors turning with a steady, soft drumbeat while the pilots performed a number of checks inside the cockpit. One of the air cavalry squadron’s ground personnel busied himself cleaning the windscreens of dirt and debris from the workhorse helicopter’s last mission. He was also making sure that the crossed golden swords emblazoned on the slick’s nose shone. Old cavalry traditions never died among the danger-loving, risk taking combat aviators.

A single pinprick of light from a G. I. flashlight moved back and forth as the slick’s crew chief led seven dark shapes across the temporary steel matting that made up the ready pad’s hard landing surface. When the pilots saw the undulating point of light, they silently turned off the main cabin lights and turned on red bulbs that illuminated their control panels.

The slick’s turbine engines whined as they spun up to their operating speed. The pilots didn’t even look back into the main cabin as the Roadrunner team climbed aboard and took seats. The crew chief that led the procession onto the ready pad tapped the left-seat pilot on the shoulder and then climbed into his door gunner’s seat, where an M-60 machinegun and infrared spotlight were mounted for night support missions.

With all the primary running lights dimmed or out, the transport helicopter rose into the sky and departed Pleiku on its assigned course.

Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs clung to the simple troop seats on the left side of the slick, watching the ground fall away and the cavalry base shrink to the size of a postage stamp. The two best friends traded glances and tried to exchange small talk over the noise of the turning rotor blades.

"You scared, Conrad?" Dobbs asked.

"I don’t know," Hauser replied. "I guess I feel a bit scared, not knowing what’s out there."

"Me, too," Dobbs said, checking the sling of his M-177 carbine. His rifle was across his lap, in case he needed it while en route. His Stoner M-22 machinegun and its ammo belts were in a protective sack with his other gear. "I feel both excited and scared, in a way."

Hong, one of the CIDG Montagnards, turned to face Dobbs and Hauser, smiling a flash of bright white teeth against his black-painted face. "You no be scared, soldiers," he said with a laugh. "We bring you home alive."

Hauser and Dobbs were shocked at Hong’s resilience, despite the loss of his two younger brothers in the last patrol. He was a tough little man, and worthy of their respect. Hong was partnered with Hauser, so that the rookie Special Forces operator could learn the ins and outs of tactical movement. Duc would be taking Dobbs under his wing. Tranh, Candy and Sparks would handle the patrol’s navigation and objectives.

-xxx-

__

Our mission, for Doggie’s and my first time out, was to locate and survey a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that Roadrunner Nine had patrolled before. MAC-V and the ARVN wanted updated intelligence on enemy movements and supply routes west of Dac To, along the Xon River.

Most likely, we were gonna go stomp around and raise a few VC and NVA eyebrows so that the ARVN and American mobile units could conduct a nice safe daylight raid on the area and send home a few elevated body counts to make the brass happy.

Hopefully, we wouldn’t stir the bad guys up enough that they’d try to stop us from getting home, or enough to really kick the regulars in the butt when they came rolling through the area like a bull in a china shop. Candy said that we would also locate and fix targets of opportunity, which usually meant overnight encampments or supply caches, and call in some Navy bombers that were assigned to an air support tasking they called "Iron Hand".

-xxx-

Xon River Valley

Near the Vietnam-Laos border

After midnight

The flight from Pleiku to the Roadrunner team’s patrol area lasted almost an hour, as the helicopter flew northwest towards the Laotian border. It wasn’t so much the distance that took such a long time to cover. The UH-1 had to follow the 7/17 Air Cavalry’s normal patrol routes to keep from attracting attention from VC on the ground that could report any out-of-the-ordinary movements.

When the pilots spotted the meandering blue-black strip of the Xon River, they dipped the slick’s nose towards the ground and the UH-1 sped along the water’s surface, barely skimming the rolling whitecaps. The heavy wash of displaced air from the slick’s rotor blades spread ripples in the river all the way to both shores. Hauser and Dobbs peered over the edge of the cabin floor at the black water rushing by, and realized they could almost reach out and dip their boots into it.

"Okay, guys, get your shit together," Candy shouted from his seat in the center of the slick’s troop compartment. "We’re going into the drink along the western shore at Point Alfa. There isn’t enough room on the shoreline for a feet dry insertion."

As the UH-1 raced along the Xon towards Point Alfa, the team’s insertion point, it quickly drew the attention of the local VC militia. Black-garbed people scurried along the riverbanks alone or in small groups, brandishing Russian-made AK-47 rifles and trying to take random pot shots at the slick. The helicopter’s door gunners returned fire with their M-60 machineguns, efficiently silencing any guerillas that presented themselves as a choice target.

"Damn," Doggie said, to no one in particular. "It feels so surreal, watching the door gunner waste those gooks from a distance."

"You should hope to never have to look a gook in the eyes as he’s dying, rookie," Candy said over the chopper’s engine noise. "And you don’t wanna see the killer stare when he’s leaping into your foxhole with a bayonet and wanting to carve your guts out."

"Hey, man," the slick’s crew chief chimed in, from his door gunner seat. "We don’t hafta like it. We just hafta do it." He turned to track his weapon’s sights along the shoreline and spotted three VC running for cover. The M-60 chattered as it released a few dozen bullets, and the shadowy figures stopped moving.

"Yeah! Get some, ya yellow bastards!" the crew chief bellowed with a sick gleam in his eye.

Hauser simply shook his head at the callous crew chief, unable to understand at the time why people could have such a bloodlust. He wasn’t yet schooled in the great meat grinder of combat.

"Point Alfa approaching!" the right-seat pilot yelled over his shoulder. "This is gonna be a dip and drop. Make it snappy when we settle in, so the VC don’t fix you or shoot us up to be ornery!"

"Okay, guys," Candy yelled. "Grab something solid!"

The slick flared to land at Point Alfa, which was simply a large boulder that jutted out into the river next to a ruined watchtower inside of which the Roadrunner teams had planted a homing beacon. Under a swirl of disturbed water droplets kicked into the air, the UH-1’s nose tipped sharply upward, as the aircraft’s weight and momentum brought it into the shallow riverbank mud tail first.

Before the skids even touched down, the men of Roadrunner Nine bailed out of both sides of the troop bay, splashing into the water and keeping their heads down until the slick leaped back into the air.

Candy held his finger to his lips and waved his hand downward, the silent signals for "keep quiet" and "stay low". He listened carefully for footfalls or breaking twigs along the trail that led away from Point Alfa, before shaking two fingers in the direction of their patrol route. The men slowly exited the water one by one, shook themselves off, and then crouched together to listen to the night sounds around them.

Hauser felt cold when he slipped out of the Xon, which was odd considering they were deep inside a temperate hot zone. The late night air seemed to cool things off around them. And the sloshing feeling in Hauser’s boots reminded him that packing the spare socks in his rucksack was actually a good idea, even though he thought the veterans at Pleiku were trying to pull a trick on him and Doggie.

"Duc and Tranh, take point while I watch the snot-noses," Candy said, casting a stare at Hauser and Dobbs. "You two newbies had better stay fuckin’ quiet as we move, or I’ll drop your asses myself. Got me?"

Hauser and Dobbs nodded silently, carefully working the bolts on their weapons to lock and load them for action. With Duc and Tranh carefully stepping down the trail ahead, the patrol moved out into enemy-held country.

When the patrol was a couple of kilometers away from the river, Candy called a halt and nodded to Sparks. Sparks crouched behind a convenient tree, laid down his rucksack and gear, and took the patrol’s long-range radio out of its waterproof sheath, setting about installing its parts and batteries. When the device was ready, he called into Pleiku to report.

"Rugrat Nine to Pillsbury Base," the signal specialist whispered, while the other members of the team spread out to take up overwatch positions. "How do you copy, over?"

"We read you. Call sign Rugrat Nine, challenge is Exeter," a static-filled voice said curtly. Sparks adjusted his radio set and asked for a repeat. The message came in clear the second time. Sparks knew his business, especially because he didn’t want the enemy to hear him talking it up all over the airwaves. That put the whole team in danger.

"Reply is Cleveland," Sparks said. "You’re coming through five-by-five."

"Roger, Cleveland. Pillsbury Base to Rugrat Nine, continue with assigned patrol," the Pleiku radio center instructed. "Your Iron Hand coverage is call sign Devil. Navy A-6 Intruders out of Yankee Station. Over."

Candy jotted down on a radio data card the call sign of the team’s Iron Hand air support, while Sparks simply memorized it. Eventually, when the team made camp, Candy would burn the card so there would be no trace of the information for the locals to discover.

"Roger that," Sparks replied. "We’ll report in as per the usual schedule. Rugrat Nine is out."

-xxx-

__

We rallied down a few measured lengths of trail over the next few hours of darkness, taking pre-planned stops along the way to get our bearings and determine our position. It was really difficult moving around under triple-growth canopy, in the dead of night. We used red filters on our Army-issue flashlights, and had to rely on Duc and Tranh’s experience on point, to make sure they didn’t uncover enemy mantraps.

As we had been told prior to leaving, Roadrunner Nine had been down this route before. And it showed. The men knew where to expect possible traps by feeling cautiously ahead with the toes of their boots. They also made sure our team was alone by listening very carefully to the rustling of the trees around them.

The last patrol down the trail had been by daylight, and Candy told us that the team had located about forty VC traps, from punji stakes to Malayan tiger gates and repositioned American ‘Claymore’ mines. The CIDG unit had disarmed or filled in all of them. He explained to us as we walked down the thin path, that the VC also knew about the trails that branched off from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and would try to booby-trap them, if they had the time and materiel. Unmanned security measures were pretty efficient for a guerilla campaign, leaving the men free to do other things instead of guard duty.

Fortunately, we were dropped into Indian Country before the VC had gotten wise to the last visit of Roadrunner Nine and their counter-trap activities. All the little trail marks and other telltales the team had left behind were intact, and all the traps were clear. Our next major rally point on the route map, roughly two klicks before we reached a junction with the Ho Chi Minh Trail, was a tiny hamlet that didn’t even have a name. It was simply a checkmark on Candy’s well-worn patrol map, which he updated himself, based on the information his team sent back to the higher-ups.

Candy later told us that he nicknamed the hamlet "Candyland", since the ‘ville’ was friendly to the team, and they often stopped there on the way in or out of the ‘badlands’ to catch a nap or cook a meal. It was good cover, and easy for them to escape if any VC got spotted roaming around nearby.

Candyland was too inconsequential a hamlet for the VC to try to subvert. It was populated by old farmers and Montagnard ethnics that preferred to tend to their small community herds and grow just enough food to get by. When the VC ‘tax collectors’ came by, the Communists would take very little, since the ville produced very little. Visits by the Special Forces were punctuated by giving, instead of stealing, and so the locals were surely more hospitable.

-xxx-

"Candyland"

Republic of Vietnam, 1.7 kilometers east of the Laos border

0300 hours, local time

Duc and Tranh stopped along the trail about a hundred meters from the Candyland hamlet, flashing their red-filtered lights three times in the direction of the rest of the patrol. The triple flash was a prearranged signal for the team to assemble and stop. Each man behind the scouts flashed the same message from one to the next, until Dobbs, manning the trail position, received his three flashes from Hauser.

The Special Forces men and their CIDG trio huddled in a small group with their flashlights snuffed, allowing the sounds of the night to engulf them. Their ears worked to pick up any sounds that were out of the ordinary. After listening for a few moments, Candy raised his M-177 carbine and snapped a Starlite aiming scope onto its carry handle. He aimed the weapon down the trail in the direction of Candyland, quietly scanning the edges of the hamlet.

"Hmm," Candy mumbled. "Something doesn’t feel right. Candyland usually has a torch or two burning at night, or at least the red glow from the coals of their community cooking fire should be visible."

"You think the VC finally decided to play God with those poor saps in the ville?" Sparks asked softly.

"Dunno," Candy said curtly. "But I don’t think I want to take any chances. Victor Charles might have left a few eyes on the ville to see if they could turn up one of our patrols. Wouldn’t be surprised to find a few of their snipers sittin’ on the hooches or behind the village well."

Tranh left the group for a moment, softly rustling the loose foliage on the trail’s surface. He returned with a small, hand-carved wooden idol. The idol was carved from a long, thin branch of a tree, that had also been hewn into a sharpened stake to hold it upright in the ground.

"Duc found this knocked over across the trail," Tranh said. He added a small explanation for Hauser and Dobbs’ benefit. "This is the ville’s good luck idol. It goes back to old Montagnard superstitions. They place the idols along the trails that approach their community, in order to ward off evil, and mark their village center as a safe haven for their friends."

"So knocking one down is taboo?" Hauser asked.

"Something like that," Tranh replied. "It is never a good sign if the village idols are left to fall to the soil."

"All the signs indicate the VC have been here, in spades," Candy whispered. "They usually ravage a hamlet and don’t take the time to clean up after themselves. They also have some understanding of the locals’ belief system, and use some of the hamlets as examples, to make the others fall more smartly into line."

"Are we gonna bypass the ville and stay on mission?" Hauser asked. "You said that if we were discovered by the enemy, our patrol would be blown."

"We’ll ultimately have to come back through here," Candy replied. "And if the enemy was hot on our footprints, we’d walk right into a classic ambush before we could blaze a new trail to our pickup LZ. We’re better off scouting the place out and handing out a little payback. We could do it silently."

Duc, Hong and Tranh nodded silently. The CIDG fighters pulled out combat knives and machetes, smiling toothy grins in the darkness as they brandished the long-bladed knives for the newbies.

"All the same," Candy continued. "We’re going to go off the trail a few meters and work our way in from another direction. We’ll do a bit of observing first, and then go in to see what the VC did to our friends."

"Sounds like a plan," Dobbs whispered, shifting his Stoner light machinegun in his hands and tugging the sling into a more comfortable position. "I’m ready to smoke a few gooks right now."

"Don’t be too eager to shoot off that piece of yours, you fuckin’ rookie," Candy growled. "It only takes one of those motherless bastards to call in the NVA division that Intelligence thinks is camped out all over these parts. Seven guys don’t have much chance of living long against ten thousand seasoned jungle fighters."

Dobbs’ face became a mask of dark fear, and Hauser could see it in his eyes, even in the lack of significant light. "Just relax, Doggie, and take it easy," Hauser said. "We’ll get out of here the same way we came in."

Dobbs calmed down immediately, when he felt Hauser’s soft touch on his shoulder. "I’ll be cool, Duke ol’ buddy," Dobbs whispered, staring into Candy’s eyes as they also softened. Candy’s eyes looked like the veteran sergeant-turned-officer was reconsidering whether he could trust his life to Dobbs when the chips were down. When they softened, the team leader had apparently made up his mind in Dobbs’ favor.

"Okay, you shit-eaters," Candy whispered, clicking his flashlight back on. "Let’s hat up and move out. Haul ass fifty meters perpendicular to the trail, and then we move in quietly behind cover. Duc and Tranh, take point."

-xxx-

Twenty minutes later, after working to near-exhaustion creeping around the hamlet to their approach angle, Roadrunner Nine clustered together once more, behind a section of undergrowth that gave them a little cover. As soon as they settled into position, Candy had his Starlite scope raised again, scanning the hamlet.

"Yeah," Candy mumbled. "Things sure ain’t right in there. Looks like the damn place is near fallin’ apart. The only way that could happen is if all the residents are dead."

"See any movement?" Sparks asked. "Should we call an Intruder in to give us some ordnance?"

"What’re you smokin’ Sparks?" Candy asked. "We’re not gonna wake all the enemy gooks by raining fire on this here ville. I don’t even want your FAC buddy over Dak To comin’ around for a smoke run. The Cong know we’re out here hunting, and they know the planes are only overhead when some namby-pamby rookie is calling down air cover. We’re gonna sweep the ville ourselves and then bug outta here. There’ll be no more hot meals and nappin’ in this here locale."

Candy pointed his gaze at Tranh, and the ARVN interpreter nodded. He raised his carbine and fixed a bayonet on the end of its barrel. The officer also checked his weapon, screwing a silencer onto the gas diffuser that was at the tip of the barrel.

"The rest of you, cover us from here," Candy whispered. "No gunfire unless we open up first. We’ll wave you in clear with a red flashlight. Just stay still and quiet; we’ll do the dirty work this time around."

After leaving their packs with the other patrol members, Candy and Tranh slipped around the thick foliage and crept slowly into the ville. They worked their way from one bamboo hut to the next, edging around the outlying homes before moving into the community huts, where the hamlet chief lived with the village’s supplies.

Candy and Tranh covered each other, bounding from walls to windows to thin bales of bamboo or drying elephant grass. The men stopped their sweep when Candy spotted a slight movement in the shadows of a half-burned hut. It could have been nothing; perhaps a small rodent or nocturnal animal was scrounging for a scrap of food or a place to nest for a day’s slumber.

Tranh studied the shadows, but his sixth sense, attuned to his surroundings, warned him of danger. He advanced around the hut he and Candy were using for cover, and belly-crawled across to the suspect hut. The ARVN corporal slid under the supporting logs and worked his way to the center of the hut, before thrusting his rifle and bayonet through the thin thatched floor of the hut. A large shape inside fell to the floor with a thud.

Candy charged into the hut and turned his flashlight onto the shape. It was a body, to be sure, and by the way it had been dressed, it probably belonged to the village chief. A quick glance at the distorted facial features confirmed that fact. However, Tranh hadn’t delivered the killing stroke.

The chieftain had been dead for a long while already and the body simply fell to the ground from its weight shifting against the floor. As a matter of fact, due to exposure to the harsh regional conditions, the corpse was beginning to decay and smelled horrible. Festering red and black welts covered his face from where the VC beat him with bamboo canes or the stocks of their AK-47 rifles. Numerous stab wounds from spike bayonets had gone right through the old chieftain’s shirt and pierced his skinny body through and through.

The chieftain’s limbs were bound tightly behind him. And for the days he sat upright after finally giving up his life, much of the blood in his body had simply drained down to his feet by gravity. The lack of blood made his flesh look almost snow white, instead of the tanned hue of the average Vietnamese peasant stock.

The way the chieftain was left behind was surely a VC trick meant to scare any Montagnards that might happen upon the ville. It was the enemy’s calling card – the "don’t mess with us" message meant for all to see.

"You okay, Candy?" Tranh whispered from under the hut’s floor.

"No way," Candy whispered, trying to hold down the urge to vomit. He ran out of the hut quickly and faced the patrol’s covering position. He flashed his red-filtered light three times.

Sparks entered the ville first, locating Candy by the glow of his flashlight. As soon as the communications man was in range, Candy snatched the radio handset from his long-range radio pack and called the fighting camp at Pleiku.

"Pillsbury Base, this is Rugrat Nine," Candy said. "Spot Report."

"Pillsbury here," a tired voice said through the radio. "Go ahead. Ready to copy."

"Rugrat Nine reports hamlet at grid fifty-two-twenty-nine, one point seven klicks from Laos, has been stomped by the VC."

"Roger that," the base operator replied. "I’ll log it in and send the intel spooks a note to update our maps. Can you give us a body count?"

"So far, we found one, the chieftain, Pillsbury," Candy whispered. "Unable to locate traces of others. Perhaps the ville was evacuated by force."

"See if you can find anything out, Rugrat Nine," the base said. "But stick to your mission timeline. We can dispatch another patrol later."

"Rugrat Nine. Wilco," Candy said. "Over and out."

-xxx-

__

Doggie and I were horrified at the sight that greeted us in the supposedly "friendly" hamlet. The VC had gutted the place. I didn’t know what we should’ve expected to see, but what was there in the dark was a real fright.

The depths to which people would go to exert power over one another, is truly appalling. Had I been exposed to Cobra back then, I might have said that the VC atrocities (and some that occurred due to American actions) were simply child’s play. But that sight had an instant sobering effect on Doggie and me, since both of us had never seen it before.

The rickety bamboo huts that the locals lived in were barely standing. There were man-sized holes in walls where the VC had tossed some of Candyland’s residents, when they resisted. Entire huts were covered in black scorching, a result of the enemy trying to put the torch to them.

Aside from the village chieftain, there wasn’t a soul in sight. The few head of cattle Candy said the villagers kept around must’ve been herded off by the enemy and added to their own supply. A number of mangy dogs were scattered around the ville, shot dead or bayoneted. The place smelled – no, it reeked – of rotting flesh and death.

Sparks hit the mother lode when he went poking around the ville’s cooking pits, which had long cooled and didn’t burn with the fires that kept the locals warm and fed. Inside the deep pits, the villagers had been discarded by the VC, after being bayoneted or shot. Their bodies were covered in ground lime, probably while they were still alive.

The contorted shapes of the people in the pits were what was left of all the ville’s inhabitants. Mothers clutched stiff corpses of their babies, trying to protect them from the VC. Men had been tossed in after trying to defend themselves, losing to single 7.62mm bullets.

I felt sick. My stomach turned in knots and it felt like a good two weeks of chow all wanted to bubble out of my guts at once. Doggie beat me to it, heaving out a barrel’s worth of industrial-grade puke. Sparks had to haul him away from the edge of the cooking pits and made him toss his cookies near the foundation of one of the huts. Respect for the dead, and all that.

I finally let the contents of my stomach go after the twisting became intolerable. None of the guys on the team laughed at us or ridiculed us for getting sick over the sight. They probably all had their fair share of vomiting sessions, having seen the war a lot longer than we did. They just let us get it out of our systems, and then Candy took down the body count.

We decided not to camp in the ville, of course. Candy had an off-trail rest site in mind, where we could observe the Ho Chi Minh Trail and rest. So we marched off on our mission, leaving behind Candyland, Vietnamese name unpronounceable. Former population, twenty-seven; current population, zero.

God Damn those Viet Cong.

-xxx-


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Five

The Dusty Trail

-xxx-

__

Well, with the images of Candyland etched in our minds, the Roadrunner Nine team moved on, to the first assigned OP, or Observation Post. We were still inside the Vietnamese border, at a junction in the Ho Chi Minh Trail where the main, heavily traveled supply route breaks up into a number of thin mountain trails. The trails snaked their way into the Central Highlands, one of the known strongholds of major VC and NVA forces.

The Central Highlands of South Vietnam was heavily Communist-controlled. The region included such names of terrain features and villages as the Ia Drang Valley, Plei Me, and Duc Co. All had been sites of major American engagements during the early years of the war.

Small patrols and Special Forces hamlet missions were unheard of in the Central Highlands, because MAC-V knew that every ville and hamlet in the area was thick with the enemy, or enemy sympathizers in the least. Often, entire villages’ worth of people volunteered to accompany VC and NVA main force units in transporting and delivering supplies from the Ho Chi Minh Trail into their dispersal sites and supply caches.

They would leave at night when the American regular soldiers and their ARVN counterparts were tired of patrolling and didn’t want to risk firefights, and then return by morning to greet the next coordinated push through the area. It was a damned efficient system, and we had the unenviable task of trying to cut off the flow of food and bullets that kept it all going strong.

You know something, I almost forgot to mention that Doggie didn’t seem quite the same after seeing Candyland, and having been admonished by the veterans to remember what we were fighting for. I used to be able to read him pretty well, considering that we had a bond like that. But his eyes seemed shallower, distant. And he didn’t want to talk about the sight. I think he didn’t want to admit it, but he looked scared. He looked like a hollow vessel of fear inside.

It wasn’t like the other fear, of being shot or blown up, even though that’s been on both of our minds since Tan Son Nhut. It was a deeper fear, brought on when we saw those locals all laid out in a row, massacred. To this day, I’ve seen the look in a lot of eyes, but never been able to really call it something concrete.

I saw the look in Flint’s eyes once, in a bombed out neighborhood in Beirut. I saw the look in the eyes of the Joes that survived the Benzheen Massacre, and in Trucial Abysmia, and in numerous battles in between. I’ll bet others have even seen the look in me, when I felt scared to the core and beyond.

-xxx-

OP Alpha-9 (RVN Central Highlands)

On the Ho Chi Minh Trail

0500 hours, local time

Hong, Duc and Tranh snoozed lightly while leaning against a spreading tree, as the team settled into a sleeping schedule. Their mission profile called for sixteen hours of rest while observing and reporting from the Alpha-9 OP. Then they would "hat up", gather their gear, and hump on to the next location.

Sparks was involved in generating a spot report, and he and Candy kept to themselves near the sleeping tree, as they compared notes and prepared their materials, notebooks and scopes for the upcoming watches. A few hundred meters closer to the main trail, Hauser and Dobbs crouched in a shallow trench, scanning the route with binoculars.

The advance position that Duke and Doggie occupied was actually on the slope side of a hillock, looking slightly down into a valley that the enemy logistics trail occupied. The dividing point that the team was assigned to monitor was a large clearing, about a half-kilometer across, off to the right of the trench.

Duke Hauser rubbed his eyes for a moment, squinting to refocus after having stared through the binoculars for a long time. Doggie kept his Stoner light machinegun handy in the trench next to his buddy and stretched quietly, suppressing the urge to yawn.

"See anything, partner?" Dobbs whispered, cradling his M-177 carbine in his arms and longing for a sip out of his canteen, which was at the sleeping tree with his rucksack.

"Miles of nothin’, pal," Hauser answered. All of a sudden, he put his fingers to his lips, as his sharp ears detected the sound of a twig breaking. He raised his own carbine and peered carefully through the thick foliage. "Shh. I heard something," he whispered.

Dobbs stayed silent, lowering his M-177 to the floor of the trench and tucking the stock of the Stoner into his shoulder. His ears detected the soft chirping and flitting of migratory birds and scratching sounds of scurrying insects at ground level. But no further abnormal sounds came.

Suddenly, a whispered voice came from behind them. "Kahuna," Sparks said quietly, keeping his head and body down. He was smart to assume that the newbies would freak out.

"Holy shit!" Doggie exclaimed, whirling around with the Stoner. He almost triggered the weapon when it came to bear on Sparks, but Duke knocked the barrel out of the way and grabbed Doggie’s wrist to dislodge his trigger finger.

"Shut up, newbie!" Sparks growled, sliding forward like he was lightning and clamping his open palm on Doggie’s mouth. "Do you wanna fuckin’ advertise our position to the whole VC main force?"

"Sorry, Sparks," Duke whispered, patting Doggie on the shoulder to calm his nerves. Doggie fell into a sitting position in the bottom of the trench, shaking off being surprised. Sparks reached down into the trench and took a fistful of Doggie’s uniform, hauling him powerfully onto his feet.

"You had best learn faster than you are, newbie," the Special Forces communications expert growled. "Because I am not getting’ wasted in the bush for you. Get your shit wired and haul ass back to Candy. Hauser, you’re staying here with me. We’re expecting a VC supply column and I want you to observe while I call down some hellfire on ‘em."

"No problem, Sparks," Hauser replied, helping Doggie with his weapons. He was struck by how sheepishly Doggie moved, like he was dwelling on a stupid schoolyard mistake.

Hauser thought that his old buddy must’ve been embarrassed about messing up, and made a point to discuss it with him when they both had a chance. He knew the importance of everyone pulling together as a team, and Doggie needed his confidence if he was going to stand up and deliver in a firefight.

Doggie disappeared into the underbrush, creeping up the hillock slope to the rest of the Roadrunner team, while Sparks settled into his place next to Duke.

"How’s it hangin’, slick?" Sparks whispered, picking up the binoculars and scanning the trail for movement. He shifted slightly in the trench as his long-range radio pack got hung up behind him and needed to be freed.

"Same, same," Hauser replied. "Nothing down there but dirt and more dirt."

Sparks checked his wristwatch for a moment and raised a finger skyward. "Just you wait," he said. "You can usually set your watch by the VC. This is their bivouac clearing. In order to reorganize for the night movement into the villes, they have to stop here and wait for the local units to come out after dusk. When they’ve settled in and gathered most of their column, we’ll call in the big boys."

Sighing to himself, Hauser leaned on his elbows over the edge of the trench, and got lost in thought as the insect and bird sounds lulled him into a silent reverie. His mind began to drift as he thought about keeping himself and Doggie alive.

-xxx-

Duke Hauser was startled by a sharp jab in his side. He shook for a second as he realized that he was drifting and snapped back to reality.

"Wake up and stay alert, slick!" Sparks growled. "I need you to cover my ass while I call down the Iron Hand! Get your carbine and blooper ready!"

Hauser rubbed his eyes for a moment and reached for his weapons, which were both already loaded. As he refocused his eyes on the trail, what had been an empty scene was filled with a crowd of civilians surrounded by armed men in khaki uniforms and wearing pith helmets. Even from a distance, the enameled red stars on the helmets were unmistakable. The North Vietnamese Army was in town.

Long columns of civilians and sympathizers carried all manner of military goods, slung from long poles for teams of people to shoulder the weight, or simply transported in their hands or atop their heads. Everything the VC main force units and their hamlet cells needed was delivered to their caches by this method.

People carried boxes of explosives, crates of Russian AK-47 and SKS rifles, large ceramic jars of food and bags of rice. Ammunition, clothes, bicycles, farm tools, and even fresh seed for planting, was all supplied from the North to help their Southern guerilla units remain self-sufficient so they could bring the fight to Saigon.

"Start counting faces, Hauser," Sparks whispered, passing Duke a plastic sheet and grease pencil. "Jot your rough counts here. Khaki uniforms are NVA regular soldiers, white or dark green uniforms are likely officers. Anyone that looks like a farmer in black pajamas and carrying a weapon is likely to be a VC main force fighter or hamlet cell member. Keep track of the civilians, women and children. Candy wants to know what the demographics are, even if we only transmit the total figure to HQ as the body count."

__

I guess Candy, and the rest of the team, would want to know how many innocent civilians we killed in these raids, Hauser thought to himself, as he began classifying the people gathering in the clearing.

"Hey Sparks," Hauser whispered, "how come we haven’t bombed this location before, to cut off this flow of supplies?"

"I dunno," Sparks replied, unfolding his tactical map and calculating the position of the target using his compass and some list of formulas that Hauser hadn’t yet been taught. "But we’ve watched this area a lot. My best guess is that the high muckety-mucks in MAC-V are loosening the reins a bit."

"You see," Sparks explained softly, making adjustments to his coordinates by scribbling with a grease pencil on the plastic-laminated map in front of him. "The politicians seem to be in more control of this war than the people who know how to fight it. We couldn’t heavily engage the enemy while patrolling out here, because we didn’t want to encroach upon Laos and Cambodia. We can’t bomb the North, where all these supplies are coming from. All of it is to keep the big, bad Chinese and Russians from getting mad at us and sending nukes over the pond to hit our homes."

"Yeah," Hauser agreed, nodding his head. "But the politicians aren’t the ones who are out here dying for this little scrap of geography."

"Exactly, slick," Sparks said. "The Regular Army and ARVN units have been pushing their way in and out of the Central Highlands since the start of major operations here. They are trying to fight this battle conventionally, carving the VC out inch by inch and ville by ville, despite the fact that firepower and mobile operations aren’t cutting the mustard here."

"I get it," Hauser said. "Not to mention, we were warned about some of the government types and ARVN regional commanders. They seem to like executing VC suspects whether they’ve been tried or not."

"That’s why I like hanging out here with people I know I can trust," Sparks said. "Other than calling down the big guns, we’re fighting the war on the enemy’s terms. And if you don’t understand the way the enemy thinks and fights, you won’t be able to have a sound strategy to defeat them. Sometimes, even the things we do are subject to political approval, and we can’t kick ass like we should."

"With all the restrictions, isn’t all this just academic?" Hauser asked. "They’ll eventually win, if we’re not allowed to. How would we make a difference here?"

"We just have to follow our orders," Sparks whispered. "We make our difference for America by coming home alive. And then we can tell our story here. We still fought. We still bled. And lots of good men still died. But we still have to believe in the fact that our fighting here is in America’s best interests. The peaceniks over in the States that are protesting the war are trying to avoid the responsibility of defending America. We might not know – or like – why we’re here, but we’re making our sacrifice for America, our homes and our families. There is a big difference between soldiers and peaceniks, even if they say there isn’t. Let that burn into your headgear, slick."

-xxx-

__

I watched the trail as a long, single file line approached from the west. Most of the people were unarmed – Shanghaied civilians, local VC sympathizers, I wasn’t sure which. The civilian types were being used as porters, to carry the supplies and hardware sent down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

By the time most of the column had finished assembling at their rally point, I had counted at least two hundred seventy-five civilians, and two companies’ worth of NVA and VC main force soldiers. That had to have been some three hundred fifty or more fighters, at least. And I had to keep tallying as the tail-end Charlies arrived. All told, I think they had a whole battalion's worth of bad guys assembling just a few hundred meters from us.

Their strategy was sheer efficiency on the enemy’s part, in my opinion. The VC did a lot to survive under the noses of the American regulars and the ARVN. They knew that we would patrol the main roads and bomb truck convoys. So they moved their goods and weapons by hand, across terrain that was too thick for our FAC aerial scouts to see through.

Many of the local guerillas materialized from nowhere, because they lived in supposedly "safe" hamlets. After raiding a military target or ARVN police station, they’d disappear once more. If they didn’t live among the South’s population, then they spent their time in the Communist enclaves in the Central Highlands, in places so fortified our combat units have to engage them in brigade strength, in order to have any noticeable effect.

Hundreds of irregulars taking on a five thousand strong U.S. Army infantry brigade? And winning? That was something the brass just couldn’t believe. Despite the relative victories of massive search and destroy operations like "Junction City", the VC movement in the Central Highlands hadn’t appeared to quit yet.

I wonder why the big thinkers didn’t commit the Special Forces and our CIDG units to independent operations. Honestly, having seen what these guys could do up close and personal, I think we could’ve won the war, taking the fight to the NVA just like they took it to us in the South. Just one good raid – perhaps a hit on Hanoi…

But nobody listens to us, other than our commanders. Well, so far as I knew at the time, no one up the line did. I hadn’t met the spooks from CIA that inhabited those parts just yet. They played the game a lot differently. But that’s a story for later on.

-xxx-

Duke Hauser’s nose wrinkled as his nostrils picked up a pungent scent, wafting up the slope from the clusters of Vietnamese assembled in the clearing. He couldn’t observe all of the goings-on, since thick woods blocked a lot of the view.

"Do you smell that?" Sparks whispered. "That stink, that smells like roasting rat guts?"

"Yeah," Hauser replied. "What the hell is that rancid stuff?"

"The locals call it _nuc nom_ ," Sparks explained. "It’s Vietnamese fish paste, often made from every part of the fish they could prepare, like the innards, fins and so on. It’s actually a staple of the Vietnamese diet, usually eaten with steamed or cooked rice. It’s pretty easy to prepare, which is why the gooks carry it around on their operations as a food ration."

"Is that what they carried in some of those large ceramic jars?" Hauser asked, remembering seeing women carrying what looked like large, terra cotta cook pots on their heads.

"Yeah," Sparks said, squinting at the notes he scrawled on his map. "They sometimes add other ingredients to help preserve the paste and then ferment it, which makes the stuff even more powerfully rancid. I personally think _nuc nom_ tastes like three-day-old shit, but guys like Tranh, Duc and Hong have no problems tossing plates full of it down their throats. If given a choice, I would even say the ham and lima beans C-rations are more palatable than _nuc nom_. If you can believe that."

"I didn’t think that any food existed, that was worse than C-rats," Hauser said with a smile. "But I guess I can believe you."

"Well, that smell means the gooks are encamped," Sparks said. "They’ve finally settled in and lit cooking fires. Now’s the time to roll in the Iron Hand, before they set out security pickets and locate our observation post. If there are any survivors, they’ll be asking themselves how we knew when to hit them. It does wonders to scare the shit out of the later columns when they report back and spread the word."

"Okay," Hauser said. "Should we tell Candy?"

"I have my orders," Sparks said. "We can call the fire down on our own. As soon as the indigs pick up the smell of nuc nom in the air, they’ll surely be coming on down to watch the fireworks, with Candy and Doggie in tow."

"Then I defer to your discretion," Hauser said, flipping up the simple ranging post for his M-79 launcher. He rammed a 40mm grenade into the blooper’s breech and snapped it shut.

Sparks brought the radio handset of his signals pack up to his lips and cupped his hand around it so the sound wouldn’t carry. "Rugrat Nine, calling Devil. Iron Hand fire mission. Stand by to copy target coordinates."

"Devil Five Oh Five, calling Rugrat Nine," said the voice of the airborne Iron Hand strike pilot, Lieutenant Jack "Razor" Barlowe. "You’ve got Razor with his ears on. My bombardier and I are in orbit and standing by."

Sparks quickly relayed the target coordinates to the Navy A-6B Intruder, which was flying a high orbit patrol route between the Central Highlands and its home carrier at Yankee Station. Razor’s Bombardier-Navigator plugged the grid references into his plane’s navigation/attack computer and returned a course and distance for Razor to fly.

"Devil Five Oh Five copies your numbers," Razor said after acknowledging Sparks’ targeting coordinates. "We are rolling in hot. Inbound from east to west for a napalm drop. I’ve got to cover sixty-seven miles first. It’s gonna be about fifteen minutes or so."

"Roger that," Sparks said. "We’re not goin’ anyplace. Be advised, Five Oh Five; danger close on your bomb pass. My OP is about three hundred meters north of the target, on the up-slope of a major terrain feature. Don’t roast me on the way in, ‘kay?"

"You got it Rugrat," Razor replied. "I’ll park ‘em to the south and burn out those bad guys. See you when I see you."

"Rugrat Nine is out," Sparks added. "Good hunting, Devil Five Oh Five."

-xxx-

__

Less than ten minutes before the expected arrival of Razor’s bombing run, Candy and the rest of the team arrived, slipping into the broad trench or behind the cover of a stone outcropping that also overlooked the clearing.

The VC and NVA soldiers seemed to be arrogantly laughing and carousing in their lay-up area, rather than seeing to security. They must’ve thought we couldn’t touch them, or that we didn’t know where they were. So, their discipline went out the window.

Then again, half of the armed men were guerillas. The soldiers probably did what they could to mold them into a cohesive fighting unit. But, being that the Communist soldiers in the NVA were merely civilian conscripts, most of them probably wanted to get down and party with their Southern brethren than listen to their officers.

Doggie seemed to have calmed down since he went back to our makeshift campsite for some rest and chow. He was quiet and watchful as he settled in next to me with the Stoner, ready for action, but not as scared or visibly excited as before.

We waited as a group for the final ten minutes, not talking much. Candy had ordered the campsite abandoned, so all our gear was piled up neatly behind the trench where we could get it. The El-Tee wasn’t sure if we’d be ordered to make a bomb damage assessment - basically to go count the dead - down there in the clearing, but we were prepared to move in whatever direction we were told to.

Now, up until this point, Doggie and I had never been anywhere near a close air support strike. All we knew was that bombs were big things and nobody but God controlled how they fell and where they exploded. We wondered for a bit what might happen if the Navy boys sent one astray.

Candy and Sparks said that they had been too close to an "Arclight" target once. The high altitude B-52’s couldn’t be told to stop bombing once they had started. The guys said it was pretty bad, noisy and hot as the high explosives went off over their covered position. They were lucky that the observation post was far enough from the bomb line that the worst they got was the noise and heat, and a few bucket loads of dirt thrown into the trench with them.

Candy admitted that he was more worried about NVA stragglers during the bombing, since the explosions put the enemy into survival mode. His team's position wasn’t too well camouflaged at the time, and he said that any NVA soldier on the run might have tripped into their spot. The fight would’ve been up close and personal then.

It was good that they warned us. Doggie and I fixed bayonets onto our M-177’s, just in case, and we made sure that the machete we shared for these patrols was also at hand.

-xxx-

Devil 505

Navy A-6B "Iron Hand" Intruder

0735 hours

The Navy attack bomber vibrated slightly at the low altitude it was flying, due to the gusts of wind that sped between the rising hills and craggy mountaintops of the Central Highlands. Lieutenant Jack Barlowe held the plane steady as he descended to the level of the mountaintops and followed the course his Bombardier-Navigator had instructed him to take.

"How are we doing, Boxer-man?" Razor asked. The Lieutenant had flown with the Red Devils attack squadron ever since he qualified on the A-6 and got sent overseas as a Lieutenant, junior grade. His Bombardier / Navigator (B/N), "Boxer", was already a Lieutenant Commander, and veteran of many strikes over the ‘Nam.

"We have ground lock, Razor," Boxer replied. "Get ready to follow my cues. I’m arming the napalm on the racks. Eight miles to target."

"Those Roadrunner guys said the target was a VC marshalling area on the Ho Chi Minh Trail - a soft target," Razor added. "How many are we dropping?"

"We’ve got orders to switch to on-call support after this run," Boxer said. "That means we can drop half our load here, and then keep the other four napalm canisters while we burn up our gas over Da Nang."

"Okay, four it is," Razor said, checking the analog displays on his weapons panel. The indicator lights from the ordnance computer showed that only half of the Intruder’s bomb load of eight, napalm canisters were ready to release.

The Intruder swept low over the trees, Razor’s stick motions jinking the plane in between the rolling up-slopes and protruding mountain summits that jutted up out of the Central Highlands. Its non-afterburning turbojet engines were improved over the A-6A model, and had a setting that put out less noise while cruising. Although the engines were still comparatively loud and detectable by ground sound-ranging equipment, the average VC peasant with a rifle wouldn’t know the bomber was approaching until it flew right over someone’s head.

Candy waved to get his team’s attention and then put his finger to his lips. He listened carefully to the daytime sounds to detect what he thought he heard. The teams of pack animals that accompanied the VC brayed or mooed in protest as the members of the supply column manhandled them into a corral with their heavy burdens.

The nocturnal insect noises had diminished a lot, but crickets and water bugs continued to make the occasional chirp or buzz. Sounds of hundreds of hushed conversations and barked orders in Vietnamese wafted up from the enemy’s assembly area. And, from a distance, there was a whoosh. The soft whoosh slowly rose to a low growl, audible only to the trained ears of someone that had been close to an air strike before. Razor and Boxer were on their approach.

-xxx-

"Sonufabitch!" Candy exclaimed in a low tone, as he stared through his set of binoculars. The movement in the enemy assembly area had changed. An officer was motioning for a number of armed troops to gather, and within the line of sight of Roadrunner Nine's observation point.

"What is it?" Sparks whispered, with a look in his eye like he already knew the answer. And the answer wasn't good.

"Someone was staring at my binoculars, while I was looking at him," Candy said. "They're coming to check us out." Candy raised his voice only slightly, so the whole team could hear. "Lock and load, guys. We have zips coming."

And, sure enough, an element of fifty NVA soldiers formed up and began to pick their way through the undergrowth between the trail and Roadrunner Nine's OP. At first, single shots from the officers' Russian-made Tokarev automatics rang out along the sloping valley. Then, the soldiers joined in with a volley of rifle fire from their AK-47's. The scouts in the NVA security party tried to send grazing fire up the slope, using their chattering 9mm sub-machineguns.

All of the Roadrunner team stayed down, ducking behind the natural cover in front of their position, and keeping inside their slit trench. Doggie shook and had a concerned look on his face as the enemy bullets ricocheted around them.

"Stay calm, Doggie," Hauser whispered, loading an antipersonnel grenade into his M-79 "blooper". "They can't hit us in here. They're just trying to probe by fire to flush us out."

"This is what Candy talked about, Duke," Dobbs said, clutching his Stoner tightly against his body. "The enemy will just run us over up here."

"Keep it tight, Dobbs," Candy growled. "We need you to rock and roll when I give the word. We're not goin' down without trying to break contact with these motherless bastards. Get ready to waste 'em on my command."

Sparks stayed calm while he raised the Iron Hand A-6B. "Devil Five-oh-five, this is Rugrat Nine. We've got zips in the wire. Can you lend additional assistance after your first pass?"

Razor's voice came over quickly, with the whine of his fully throttled turbojets in the background. "Devil is inbound on the strike, Rugrat Nine. We plan to lay down four gas cans. Do you want a full spread?"

"We'll take everything you have," Sparks said. "We're going to break contact and head for high ground until the smoke clears."

"Roger that," Razor said, nudging Boxer to arm all the napalm canisters on his wing racks. "We're laying it all down on your target. Keep your heads down; the first drop is in sixty seconds."

Tranh spotted the shrub branches about thirty feet in front of him rustling, and the first NVA scout appeared, pointing his K-50 SMG at the Roadrunner team's trench. Without even shouting a warning, the ARVN interpreter and commando popped up out of his spot in the zigzag trench and opened up with the WWII M-1A1 carbine that he carried.

Three .30-caliber bullets tore through the NVA scout, throwing him backward off his feet and making him tumble down the slope toward his comrades. The falling corpse hastened the other NVA as they moved up the slope, firing randomly over the brush.

Candy saw the NVA scout just as Tranh popped up to put his carbine to work. "Pop up!" he yelled, bringing his M-177 up to shooting position and tucking the adjustable butt stock tightly into his shoulder. "Aimed fire only! Conserve your ammo!"

-xxx-

__

That's right, dear readers, this was my very first REAL firefight. There I was, with six guys on my side, deep in enemy held territory. We were facing down a security force of about fifty NVA at least, working their way up the hill to us with what looked like a blood fervor in their eyes.

They didn't know that the silent, screaming death was on the way, in the form of our Iron Hand air cover and Razor's eight napalm-armed cluster munitions.

But that didn't matter to the patrol. At odds of better than seven to one, they were planning to overwhelm us. Even if we took all of the NVA in the security party out, they still had 287 others right behind them. And then there was the 160 VC. And after that, perhaps some of the 275 civilian men, women, or children being used as laborers would take up weapons from the fallen and try to bring us in.

When I fired my first volley into this lop-sided battle, I could see the faces of the two NVA conscripts that I killed. They were scouts with sub-machineguns, coming at me in a dead run, screaming blood-curdling battle cries. My instincts kicked in before my brain really had a chance to think things through.

I know that I aimed and fired ten shots from my carbine, as the two scouts went down. Then, my ears registered three things. One was the screams of the conscripts that I had shot, which didn't compare to this screaming in my head. The second was Candy yelling for us to take cover and get ready to hump out of the trench. And the third was a steadily growing whine from above.

-xxx-

The A-6B Intruder made one screaming pass at full military power, the banshee wail of its engines temporarily distracting the NVA security party from their advance. With the American team returning fire, the scouts wisely slowed down and the riflemen following them adjusted their advance accordingly.

The sound of the passing jet came and went. And then, the earth shook.

KARUMPH!

KARUMPH!

KARUMPH!

KARUMPH!

Four loud thunderclaps resounded in the small valley, as Razor's bomb run laid the napalm right on target. Thousands of pounds of chemical accelerants and gelled fuel oil spread through the campsite, burning the animals, the enemy supplies, the porters and soldiers alike in thousand-plus degree fire.

Duke and the others flattened inside their trench, protecting their eyes from the exploding ordnance. Even from the distance they were in relation to the impact points of the bombs, they could feel the great heat of the expanding firestorm.

But the team was still in danger and couldn't run, without the few remaining NVA trying to shoot them in the back. Candy and Sparks waved for Hong, Duc and Tranh to rise up and return fire, and then the "hairless devil" grabbed Doggie by his web gear.

"Get your machine gun rocking, slick!" Candy yelled over the roar of the napalm fire. "Hauser! Lay some Willie Pete into the enemy patrol before we duck outta here!"

Hauser popped his head up and saw the hellish scene below. Where the marshalling area had once been a scene of control and order, it was now nearly a burned-out wasteland. Hundreds of bodies were lying out, dead from the fires, or from asphyxiation when the napalm flames ate up all the oxygen within the conflagration.

Many of the people that still moved were covered in deep burns that penetrated their flesh, all the way to their exposed organs. Many of them were collapsing as they ran. They couldn't hope to survive very long out in the target zone, especially since the only burn care was at an American field hospital more than twenty miles away in the ARVN "safe" area.

Hauser dropped his M-177 and tucked the M-79 into the small of his armpit. He didn't care what was loaded in the tube when he yelled out, "Fire in the hole!" and sent the 40mm grenade flying towards the few NVA soldiers that were safely out of range of the napalm run.

The first shot was a beehive round, an antipersonnel type that was good for area denial, but only marginally effective when there were a lot of obstructions. Candy knew Hauser had shot the wrong round when he heard the grenade's characteristic burst, its effects muffled and diminished by the jungle vegetation.

"Willie Pete, not beehive, Hauser!" Candy yelled. "We can't break contact until you blind those enemy gooks!"

Hauser snapped out of his horrified reverie, and his fingers found the right grenade. He pulled the white phosphorus round out of the ammo bandoleer across his chest, and loaded it, snapping the breech of the M-79 shut with its hollow click.

"Fire in the hole!" Duke shouted again, bringing the barrel up and letting the grenade go. Everyone in the team ducked behind cover and waited.

The White Phosphorus round exploded in a shower of hot sparks, the chemical and metal inside the grenade reacting to create an unnaturally bright, white-hot light. It flash-blinded the few survivors of the NVA security unit and drove them down to the ground, screaming in fright and pain.

"Move it!" Candy yelled. "Get to the rally point on the summit! Go! Go! Go!"

Sparks tore out of the trench first, stumbling forward as he ran up the slope. As he moved, he instructed Razor over the radio to put his second pass along the slope behind the Roadrunner team, in order to completely burn out any surviving enemy soldiers.

The rest of the team moved out in pairs, covering each other with their carbines. Doggie slung his machinegun across his back before struggling to climb out of the trench. Hauser almost left his M-177 behind, but he remembered to reach back into the trench to haul it out. He took one final look at the hell fire the bomb run had started before running off with Doggie.

-xxx-

__

We were too busy running up-slope to the rally point at the summit of our hill, to see what Razor and Boxer did on their second pass. It was a repeat of the first run. When they released the other four napalm loads on their wings, the ground shook, and the jungle burned to a crisp.

No one could've survived that. I'm surprised WE survived that. And the Navy can claim another victory. Some seven hundred seventy-two NVA, VC and civilians were dead.

That was one Helluva body count for the brass, eh?

-xxx-


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Six

Personal Vices

-xxx-

__

We made it out of the strike area unscathed and rallied at the summit of the terrain feature that we had occupied before the whole shooting match started. Headquarters ordered us to stick around until dark, and then creep back down to the site to make a body count.

Although all of us verbally denounced the idea to Candy as too risky, he explained that the survivors would've blended into the countryside or returned to their villages in an attempt to make it look like nothing was wrong with their daily lives. Since no VC or NVA troops had pursued the fleeing patrol, it was likely that anyone remotely effective as a fighter had become a crispy critter, or panicked and ran.

Candy also explained that Command probably wanted some hard intelligence other than our initial counts and observations. Perhaps one of the partially dismembered corpses was an NVA officer who was carrying war plans to the VC regional command cells in the South. Or, maybe there would be evidence of foreign intervention on the North's behalf, like brand-new Russian weapons, or Soviet Spetznaz advisors.

Whatever the brass hats were looking for, it wasn't up to us to question. The command hooch back in Pleiku made it abundantly clear that our patrol route was being terminated, and we were to search the remains of the campsite for anything we could bring back for the spooks to pore over.

At least Candy wasn't one of those pansy-ass "ticket puncher" officers in the Regular Army, who was simply looking for any form of combat experience to make their records jackets thicker and make themselves more promotable. Some of those weenies ended up getting lots of our men killed by the enemy through bad leadership and worse odds.

No, friends, Candy had the Infantryman's eye. He had the Infantryman's sixth sense for danger. And, he had the Infantryman's guts. Which meant that his sole purpose in war was to get out alive. The mission could hang out to dry if his team was in danger of dying horribly in the process. So he made sure that we had our survival chance when we took a look at the bombing site.

Thank God for people like Candy.

We didn't find much at the site, other than charred remains. The usual supplies were evident - foodstuffs, grain, ammunition, rice, livestock, bicycles, and Kalashnikovs. There was no magic paper with the enemy's most vital data on it. There were simply hundreds of dead gooks who only had a future as rotting bones in the sun to show for their hardships, and their life choices.

Roadrunner Nine returned to Pleiku after humping out of the bush for twelve hours, and being extracted from an LZ near the Xon River, but farther south, in the supposedly "pacified" sector. We spent extra time avoiding the route we entered Indian Country from, in case the enemy decided to clamp down the entire sector. We were lucky that word didn't get out all that quickly.

The debriefing from the raid took almost as long as the patrol itself. Each of the American team members spent around three days (but only a few hours a day) in the Intel hooch, answering questions from the spooks about what we saw, where we moved, and what we did up to the air strike. Truth be told, I was getting so bored of the process by the end, that I wanted to rattle off a list of things that I found in a pile of latrine shit, just to see if they were still listening.

Considering that the attack on the enemy column was pretty important, and successful since we guided the bomber in, MSGT Draper rewarded us by giving us three days of liberty to just poke around the camp. Then Doggie and I had to start our field training with some of the certified instructors in the camp, while Candy and Sparks prepared for the next assignment with our CIDG friends.

-xxx-

Pleiku Special Forces Camp

Roadrunner Team hooch complex

Staff Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs trudged into their assigned hooch, looking like they were already stone-cold veterans of the war. They herded their way past the other Special Forces men milling about, chatting and playing cards, until they found their bed racks. While they were on assignment, the Supply men in the camp had delivered their personal items and left their packed duffel bags on the racks, along with a stash of camp-issued items such as towels and bed sheets.

The two soldiers found their assigned racks easily; they were the only two in the hooch that had bare mattresses and clean surroundings. In personalizing their living spaces, the lot of Pleiku operators had acquired such a motley collection of goods and contraband, that a staff inspection of the place would make an officer think he was in the garbage facility… or "Lost and Found".

"Phew!" Duke said, unslinging his field ruck and dropping it on top of the footlocker at the foot of his bed. "It's gonna feel good to get these damn boots off for a while."

"Better straighten up your headgear, newbie," the operator one bed over - a Sergeant 1st Class Newman - whispered. "This place gets as dangerous as Indian Country, my man. We sleep with loaded weapons and our boots on."

Doggie allowed a shiver to run up his spine. "Is there any place where a guy could feel safe in this whole country?" the rookie asked.

"Not unless you count the big bad bush between a mama-san's legs," the other soldier replied with a chuckle. Newman rolled up a green, leafy substance into a cigarette paper and lit it up, puffing on the joint and blowing smoke rings in the air.

"What is that stuff?" Doggie asked, pointing to the joint.

"It's Mary Jane," Newman replied, letting out a slight cough and shaking as the narcotic began to take effect. "Y'know. Weed. Marijuana. It helps take the edge off of being here in the shit."

Duke turned away to draw Doggie close for a whisper. "Dobbs… Henry…" he said. "Don't get involved in that stuff. We have to report the stash to Top Sergeant Draper."

"Draper looks the other way," Newman said, overhearing the whispered remark. "The guy who brings this stash in sees to it. Come on over here, new guys. Take a hit or two. You won't feel any pain after a while."

Another of the hooch's residents - Sergeant "Gooch" Goodland - walked up behind the two GI's, clapping each on the back before cracking open the metal cap that covered a glass bottle of local beer. "You two greenies look like you've seen a ghost," Goodland observed. "I can't believe that you've got The Stare after one patrol."

"We marched into a ville that the VC did a clean up job on," Dobbs said, his face turning green just at the memories of what he had seen for the very first time. "The whole ville… everyone… They killed them."

"War is hell, kid," the soldier with the marijuana joint said with a laugh. "Who knows? If the whole ville was full'a Commie gooks, then I say good riddance. I'd surely hate for some sympathizer ta sneak in the camp and slit my throat while you rookies are sleepin' off your guard duty."

"Jesus, Newman," Dobbs said, trying to keep his chow down. "That's cold."

"You need to be cold to survive the 'Nam," Goodland said, taking a drag on Newman's joint and smiling. "Or else, the 'Nam will eat your green ass alive. You have to get in tune with the way things are, my man."

Hauser shook his head and grabbed a shaving bag from his footlocker. "No way, guys," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm going home in one piece. There's no way the system is gonna take control of me. I don't care how things are. I'm gonna make my own way." He left the hooch without waiting for Dobbs to follow.

Dobbs sat down on the edge of his bunk, while Newman and Goodland watched him bury his face into his hands.

"Your friend's wound up a little too tight, friend," Newman said. "He's too much of a goody-goody for this hooch."

"Duke's a good man," Dobbs said, pushing away a bottle of beer offered to him by Goodland.

"The Duke?" Newman said. "Ha! There ain't no way he's anything like John Wayne. Listen, kid. If you don't start learning how the game is played, you and your goody-goody friend are gonna end up dead, an' nobody's gonna give a rat's ass about it."

Newman leaned closer to Dobbs, and offered him the smoldering joint. "If you don't play the system, then the system will play you," he said. "Don't worry, you'll live."

With nervous, trembling fingers, Dobbs took the joint into his hand.

-xxx-

Duke collected himself after witnessing the events in the hooch and made his way to the command bunker to try to find MSGT Draper for himself.

Draper was at his usual indoor place, inside the commo room, and working from a makeshift desk across from the camp's radios, when Duke found him. The camp's senior NCO looked up from a tattered copy of Playboy magazine and acknowledged his arrival with a nod.

"What'cha want, new guy?" Draper asked.

"I need to talk to you," Duke replied. "There's a drug problem in our hooch."

"Shit," Draper swore softly, "Tell me a place in the whole fuckin' RVN where there isn't a drug problem."

"Well, two of the guys from Roadrunner Four - Newman and Goodland - are smokin' joints in the hooch. They tried to offer some to Dobbs and me."

"So long as they weren't smoking their shit while on guard duty, I don't give a rat's ass what they do in the hooch," Draper said, looking up at the idealistic young sergeant.

"But, Master Sergeant - they're breaking Army regulations!" Duke asserted.

"Listen up, kid," Draper continued, "and you listen good. Get this to sink into yer headgear. We're in a Special Forces camp. The rear echelon motherfuckers that make the rules are as far away from here as they can possibly be. We go through shit that would turn your average grunt crazy in less than a month. And we have to do it for a stretch of twelve at least. Some of the sick fucks that live here are on their second and third tours. Most of us are just trying to survive our DEROS date. The guys do what they do to stay sane. I let it happen to some degree, because I need all the sane troops I can get."

"Then let me talk to the Captain," Duke insisted. "Let's see what he'll do about this."

"You can try," Draper responded. "But I doubt you'll get anywhere. The Cap'n is just marking his time too. He wants to go home to a cushy job in some Stateside base, makin' a fast promotion to staff grade because of his _combat experience_. He doesn't make any bones about it. If you ask me, he'd let this whole camp get overrun and all of us grunts killed, if he wasn't smack dab in the middle of it waiting to be relieved."

Duke shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. "So, we've become our own worst enemy? _Drugs? Apathy?_ Is this why we joined the Army?"

"Your ideals are commendable, kid," Draper said. "But that doesn't stop the killing. It's hell here, and we're just trying to make it. That's the system, my friend." The top kick motioned for Duke to lean closer. "Let me give you a very important piece of advice. Don't try taking this into your own hands. Let it ride. It's been here before you and it'll be here after you rotate back to the world. Worry about yourself. The last guy who tried to shake up the system was in the latrine when a 'random VC mortar ranging round' hit it square on. Killed the poor fucker while he dropped trou and was takin' a crap. Watch your own back. Make your own choices. And then, barring the VC, you'll make it home. Clear?"

"Crystal," Duke replied. He took his leave of MSGT Draper and left to find Candy, to find out what was first on his training agenda. As the young sergeant left the command bunker, Draper shook his head.

__

He's a goner, the top kick predicted to himself. _The kid's smart, but he doesn't get it. He's bound to get fragged for messin' with the wrong grunts._

-xxx-

__

This was a hard time for me. It really shook my idea of the values of the Army in general. Nobody liked the war in Vietnam by the time I began my stretch there. And those of us that were there didn't even care about our own camp-mates.

Now, a pair of drug-junkie scumbags was getting MY FRIEND hooked on some bad stuff. I couldn't trust my chain of command. I couldn't make a stink, or else I'd be watching my own ass 24-7.

But where I come from, when a guy makes a promise to a friend, he keeps it. It doesn't matter whether we're in the RVN, or some stinking jungle, or the middle of Beirut. An honorable man keeps his word, and keeps the faith that right will prevail over wrongdoing.

Somehow, I'll have to keep Doggie on the straight and narrow. I just don't know how yet.

-xxx-


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Seven

"Incoming!"

-xxx-

__

Pleiku Special Forces Fighting Camp

August, 1970

__

Well, folks, our field training at the camp was uneventful for about a month. Doggie and I hung around Pleiku, picking up some of the local customs and a generous helping of the Vietnamese vernacular, which helped us communicate better with the fighters in the units we shared space with.

We worked in the trenches with the guys, building hooches, treating injuries, and running laps around the helicopter pad. Because of new orders from higher commands, the 2nd MIKE Force's Roadrunner teams didn't mount too many patrols, leaving much of the seek-and-destroy work to the ARVN Airborne Ranger outfit that lived with us.

It was strange that for much of the month, other than engagements with our seek-and-destroy patrols in the field, the Viet Cong were leaving our camp alone. The Seventeenth Cavalry's base got hit several times by harassing mortar attacks, but every time we saddled up to kick some VC butt and relieve the horse soldiers, they were already gone.

Roadrunner Nine took on four new guys, which was all the 2nd MIKE could spare. That brought us up to eleven men in our little outfit. We hadn't met the newbies on the team, since Candy and Sparks were busy training them, and they had been kept separated from Doggie and me while we learned about the team radios, mortar targeting and field medicine from the numerous support people and senior sergeants.

Occasionally, we would come across Duc, Hong, or Tranh on work details, but never had much time to spend with them. Everyone was busy. The 2nd MIKE Force in general, was bleeding like a sieve. Casualties were starting to mount because the larger formations were being ordered onto the offensive. American units were being stretched too thinly to cover their sectors, and the MIKE battalions had to start filling in the gaps, serving as air-transportable "fire brigade" outfits.

There was talk about disbanding the Roadrunner teams, in order to form conventional rifle companies out of the local fighters and their advisors, since the escalation of violence was considered to be beyond the need for reconnaissance. The Intel boys had our little headquarters worried about attacks on our fighting camp. So, we began to pull round the clock watches in the battle trenches.

Doggie’s troubles with the local drug trade got progressively worse as the month dragged on. He believed all of the bullshit the 2nd MIKE’s resident troublemakers were dishing out, in spades. He must have really taken a hit in his confidence during our first Roadrunner patrol, and he never fully recovered from it. As much as he spent time with me on work details and training time with Candy and Sparks, or having chow down in the platoon hooch that we were billeted in, Doggie started taking a lot more time of his own. And he was very secretive about it.

Not that I fault the guy for wanting to spend time sorting this mess of a war out for himself, but I was pretty damn sure that he was seeking his escape in hashish or marijuana. I chose to give Newman and Goodland a wide berth, while keeping a watchful eye out for shenanigans they might try to pull. Sparks also pointed out a few of the other bad seeds that word might spread to. Of course, I couldn’t memorize all their faces. I just hoped that I wouldn’t have to take action. I hoped that Doggie would figure things out for himself and kick his exploration into drugs before it became an addiction.

Honestly, I think Doggie wasn’t cut out for real, gritty, "kill-‘em-all-and-let-God-sort-‘em-out" combat. It’s a shitty thing to say about a fellow grunt in the field, but for his sake, I ended up keeping my eyes open for both of us.

-xxx-

The sunlight was waning early as it dipped below the hilltops and ridges to the west of Pleiku. Duke was still on the camp perimeter, keeping watch over a squad of CIDG recruits and a combat engineer who was directing them as they dug out trenches that had caved in from the last VC attack. He was trying his hardest to stay alert, but the work shifts building up the camp defenses and the guard duty was taking its toll in fatigue.

To some degree, Duke had begun to wish for a new Roadrunner assignment. At least the team was sure to get a fair amount of rest and a limited amount of exertion in the field. The danger wasn’t much of a concern for him, even though the idea of being discovered deep in enemy territory did make him think about being careful and alert at all times.

Much of the camp had quieted down already, as the Vietnamese indigs that lived within the perimeter settled down for their evening meals, with many of the CIDG fighters. Master Sergeant Draper and his ARVN counterpart were setting out the early evening watch’s sentries, and the machinegun bunkers sprinkled around the fighting camp were being manned. An alert squad of Special Forces sergeants laid themselves out in the 81mm mortar pits, grousing about having drawn the duty of keeping the camp’s best support weapons ready to go.

Duke scanned the closest sector of the hewn-back tree line with his binoculars and gnawed at a piece of freeze-dried beef from his ration pack, wishing that his guard duty would be ended by the engineer NCO deciding that his laborers were done for the day. The patrols were in, the Roadrunners were out, and the pair of big bulldozers that were used to keep the jungle a safe distance away were parked inside the camp. A little sleep would’ve hit the spot…

-xxx-

__

Let me tell you this, dear friends. I don’t care if you’ve heard the same thing a thousand times, from a thousand people who never have set foot in a combat zone. I am here in living color to prove that two key principles run rampant during wartime, out in the field.

One is that Murphy – you know, the Murphy’s Law guy – had to have been a grunt. I say this because the worst possible things happened to grunts when they least expected them. That’s why I have always lived my life alert and on the sharp edge. Some of the head shrinkers, Psyche-Out included, think that I am wound up too tightly. But I say that I’d rather be alert and alive than slacked off and dead. I’m not gonna knock my policy now – it kept me alive for all these years.

The other given is that war for the grunts is long periods of boredom and menial activities, punctuated by short bursts of sheer terror. I was about to have one of those "coming to Jesus" moments. Obviously the first times you experience a new face of death, those are the ones you never, ever forget. You won’t have time to remember the one that ends up getting you – because you’d be a corpse if you ever let it happen.

-xxx-

The sun finally dipped below the horizon and darkness began to creep across Pleiku. The clanging of the picks and shovels belonging to the CIDG squad continued to work under the urging of the American combat engineer in charge. Some of the indigs had broken into song, spurring themselves on to complete the progress they were tasked with faster.

Duke took a moment to sit down on the sloping ground to give his legs a rest, munching away at the remains of his ration pack. In the corner of his eye, inside the tree line, the buck sergeant caught a flash, and a streak of white smoke rising into the air.

When the starburst flare popped its red chemical propellant and burned in the air, Duke knew what was going on. Someone had approached the perimeter from someplace other than the safe lanes known to all the patrols. It had to be the Viet Cong.

__

"C

ảnh giác đề phňng," Hauser yelled in Vietnamese. _Be alert!  
_  
 __

“VC tấn công các vị trí địch!”

_The Viet Cong are attacking our positions!  
_

The CIDG fighters heard Duke’s warning and scrambled into their half-excavated trench, trying to quickly exchange their picks and shovels for the motley collection of WWII-vintage rifles stacked in the floor of the finished section. The engineer, who had been casually walking atop the ridge formed by the front of the trench, dove inside, shouting frantically for someone to find his helmet.

Duke looked around for cover of his own. Although he figured lookouts in the camp center would spot the red flare, someone had to guide the reinforcements as they swarmed out to meet the VC push. The mortars needed an observer to call down fire.

Unfortunately, Duke didn’t have a radio handy. The camp only had a limited number of PRC-77 patrol radios, and with many of them in states of disrepair, they had to be issued by priority to the patrols and Roadrunners who needed them the most. However, Duke knew that one of the machinegun bunkers was close by. They all had sound-powered telephones that were wired up to the commo hooch. He could report from there.

Keeping his attention on the tree line for movement or enemy fire, Duke scrambled along the uneven ground to the machinegun bunker, a low structure lined with triple layers of sandbags for protection. He kept low, in case tripping the flare was done on purpose, and VC snipers were looking to pick off any sentries they saw before the main enemy attack.

His heart thumping hard in his chest, Hauser slid into the trench that allowed access to the machinegun bunker. It was darker inside, and hard to see without his flashlight, but he was able to feel his way to the telephone box. Raising the handset to his ear, Duke unslung his M-177 carbine and cranked a small handle that energized the set.

"Bunker sixteen to commo hooch," Duke said into the phone. "I have a trip flare in my sector. Have not observed VC movement out of the tree line. Sound the camp alert!" Hauser got to his feet, holding the handset in one hand and the barrel of his carbine with the other. Raising his eyes over the sandbags, he looked at the tree line once more.

In the commo hooch, Master Sergeant Draper heard Duke’s report and scrambled into the camp commander’s office.

"Sir!" Draper said excitedly. "We have a trip flare near bunker sixteen. Sergeant Hauser reports no further movements. Should I mount a patrol?"

"Are we expecting anyone back through the perimeter tonight?"

"Negative, sir. All of our Roadrunner missions are still active, and the ARVN ambush patrols won’t be rolling back ‘till dawn. No one radioed for assistance from the field."

"Alert the defense company and get the trenches and bunkers manned, Draper," the captain said. "Make sure your mortar men are ready to dish out some steel."

"You got it, sir," Draper replied, turning on his heel and reaching for the red button that set off the camp’s air-powered alert siren.

-xxx-

__

In combat, timing is everything. If you’re off by even mere seconds, you could lose the critical advantage you need to win a battle. When I heard the siren echoing across the camp, I knew that the enemy knew we had our BVD’s down around our ankles.

Before the security teams and the defense company could go from their hooches to the bunkers, that was when I saw it.

Human waves. A line of Viet Cong in their black pajamas rolling out of the tree line like wraiths. They didn’t stage their attacks with tanks on the rolling hills and open roadways. They came at us like Medieval foot soldiers, hoping to win victory by sheer numbers.

The skirmishers came first, led by shouting NVA officers in their dark green uniforms and tan pith helmets. They came in small bunches, to occupy what cover they could, and pepper our trenches and perimeter sentries with sub-machinegun fire. They would be followed by the breaching parties, which carried hand-hewn bamboo ladders in teams of four, unarmed men.

The ladders were for throwing on top of the coils of razor and concertina wire that we strung along our outermost perimeter. Sometimes, they used the ladders to bridge gaps we dug in the ground and lined the pits with sharpened punji stakes. The stakes were a trick we learned from them, just like they figured out how to use our own unexploded ordnance against us.

Once lanes were carved out in our defenses, the main body would burst out of the tree line like a Mongol horde, screaming and firing in all directions. Sappers with explosives would try to hurl them into our trenches, to carve out entire squads at a time. Squads of nine riflemen apiece would hammer at our defenses, cutting down everything that poked up just a little flesh to blow off.

And there were always the snipers. The best VC marksmen would climb up in the trees, and even with antique bolt-action rifles, they would plink at our officers and senior non-coms as they tried to rally the defense. Despite the images of careless throwing away of lives in direct assaults, the VC always had a plan. And for them, it worked quite often.

The veteran weapons instructors had gone through gory descriptions of the VC camp assault tactics, and to this day, some of the things I saw repelling those 

en masse _waves of charging men (and even women sometimes) are no less horrible.  
_

-xxx-

Kalashnikov rounds buzzed by the bunker like hot, angry hornets with a deadly sting as Hauser crouched behind the sandbagged front wall of the entrenchment. The skirmishers had to be halfway across the open ground, in Duke’s estimation, from the proximity of the shouts and occasional painful screams as charging Viet Cong fell into the randomly positioned mantraps outside the wire.

He dared for a moment to raise his head and look at the enemy onslaught for the first time. The image reminded him of one of his favorite John Wayne films. Just like whooping and hollering Indians coming across the plains, the VC stormed out of the jungle.

Hauser unsafed his M-177 and began firing. He took single shots at the skirmishers, dropping three into the loose dirt and gravel. But for the three he hit, scores more were following right behind. He heard the reports of .30 caliber rifle fire from the trench system behind his bunker, as the CIDG fighters began to gather their wits and started to repel the assault.

Shouts of other Special Forces soldiers, in both English and Vietnamese, carried over the sounds of the warning flares going off in the tree line and the firing of the enemy assault teams. All of a sudden, Hauser heard the sounds of shifting gravel and heavy footfalls right behind him.

Swinging around to bring his carbine to bear, the sergeant kept his trigger finger in check when he saw three American troopers diving into the bunker. The men were Bunker Sixteen’s assigned machinegun team, one of whom had the heavy barreled M-60, the second reaching for the sound-powered phone, and the third dumping out boxes of ammo belts for the ‘sixty.

"What the hell?" the M-60 "pig" gunner yelped, skidding onto his knees to set the machinegun up in the bunker’s firing port. "This is our fuckin’ bunker! You can’t get under foot!"

"I called in the alarm, slick!" Duke retorted, nudging the machine gunner to one side of the firing port and finishing off his first magazine of his own ammo at nearly full automatic.

"There ain’t no room for you in here, rookie!" the ammo porter, a black man tall enough to be a basketball player, shouted while he loaded his own M-16 rifle. "Get your narrow ass out in the trench! Ain’t room for more than three guys workin’ in here!"

The third man on the MG team was rummaging around on the floor of the bunker, with the sound powered phone against one side of his face. "How close are they?" he asked his teammates with a nervous voice. "Are they in the wire yet?"

The pig gunner opened up with a volley from his M-60, sending a mix of ball ammo and tracers skipping across the VC assault lanes. His fire began to cut down the skirmishers, while the riflemen filling up the defensive earthworks accurately picked off some of the breachers with their ladders before they could throw them onto the razor wire.

"They’re still fightin’ their way to the wire," the gunner shouted in between long bursts from his M-60. "Make sure you can find the damn clackers we wired up out there yesterday morning!"

"I think I have ‘em," the man on the phone said, before turning to send a spot report to the commo hooch.

Hauser heard the eerie whistle of mortar shells arcing over the bunker, just when the black ammo porter shoved him toward the exit. "I told ya to get the hell out, rookie! We can’t be trippin’ over you in here! Get out there and fight!"

The VC only had light 60mm mortars, with limited range. The fire they delivered began to chew up the open ground just ahead of their advancing fighters, while reports from all along the perimeter guided the camp’s 81mm heavy mortar platoon in its process of laying down accurate support for the defenders.

High explosive and canister rounds burst along the perimeter wire, blasting entire assault squads of VC into fiery cascades of dirt and scorched body parts. Hauser scrambled out of the bunker and into the trench network, keeping his head down and oddly wondering for a moment where Doggie, Candy and Sparks had ended up in all of the chaos.

VC mortar rounds broke Duke’s reverie about his friends, bursting against the hillsides that protected the trenches. Soft mud and black soil spilled into the trench and all over Sgt. Hauser while he tried to return fire with his M-177. Unable to bring his head too far over the top of the trench, he desperately held down the trigger of his carbine, guiding the barrel in a side-to-side spraying motion by holding its metal stock, until the second magazine of ammo was expended.

Hauser didn’t know if any of the rounds had hit their marks, and more showers of mud and dirt crashing onto his head and shoulders made him duck to the trench floor. In the orange light of the exploding mortar shells, he saw that his rifle bolt was cocked open once more. It was time to reload.

Fishing through the baggy pockets of the ammo pouches hanging from his web gear, Duke kept track of how many clips of rifle ammunition he had already used. With two gone, all of sixty rounds, he only had seven left. Two hundred and ten bullets didn’t seem like they would last very long if he was unable to find some friends with whom he could take up position.

-xxx-

__

Your worst enemy in a firefight is being alone. Second worst is running out of ammo. I say this because when you run out of ammo, you could strip the dead, steal from the enemy even, or borrow from a pal to share what was left of the wealth. Even without ammo, your rifle, entrenching tool and combat knife make great close-quarters equalizers.

But when you’re alone, the psychological impact is horrible. You feel like you could get surrounded at any moment. No friend is there to lean on if you get hit. No one would know if you bought it right then and there.

One might think, "Hey wait a second, Top. You were in a fighting camp, with a couple hundred buddies around. You just got tossed out of a bunker by its machinegun team. How the hell can you expect to feel alone with all that?"

My answer is, "It’s totally possible, slick." That’s right. In the dark, with bullets flying, mortar rounds cooking off, and every manner of audible input coming from every direction, you don’t know which way is up, unless someone is close enough to reach out and touch. And you have to know he’s friendly.

Most of the camp companies were still in trenches behind me. I was facing down the VC almost on my own. At least, that’s how I perceived my situation. And it’s not the kind of story you tell your grandkids about. That kind of alone is bad news, friends.

-xxx-

Hauser skidded to a stop after reloading, ready to fire again. As he swung the barrel of his carbine into a small break in the trench, he could still pick out the streams of tracer fire from bunker sixteen.

Duke opened up, the familiar punch-punch-punch of his carbine sounding sweet in his ears. He pinpointed a sapper team and took down their ladder bearers, making the ones with satchel charges hit the ground to fire back.

A hellish white-orange glow began to fill the sky as the mortar crewmen launched star shells into the air to light up the battlefield. One by one, the six tubes started to lay steel between the outer perimeter wire and the tree line, further chewing up the Viet Cong assault formations.

As some of the Viet Cong fighters were cut down, others filled their places, or propped them up to keep charging. Under the glow of the parachute flares, a team of VC sappers had crept in close enough to bunker sixteen to lob three hand grenades at the fortified position.

With an earth-shaking concussion, the inside of the bunker was smashed by at least one of the grenades, and black smoke started pouring out of the trench exit and gun slits. Moans from the dying soldiers inside carried through the trenches, as Duke saw the VC skirmishers advancing inexorably closer to the wire.

"Medic!" Duke screamed, hoping that someone in the trench network had heard. A handful of silhouettes moved forward into the perimeter line where he was standing his ground, but his voice didn’t carry over the explosions and weapons fire.

Without the bunker to guide the mortar battery’s suppression fire, the VC assault teams were able to renew their advance, while their support troops used grazing fire to hold the trench defenders in their places. Duke knew that he was closest and had to try to get communications with the main camp back in order.

Bending over into a crouch, he sprinted back to the bunker entrance and choked back the urge to throw up from the acrid smoke and strong chemical smells inside. Wrapping his sweat towel around his face, Duke crawled inside, groping his way around the dark structure.

His first discovery was soft and pliable, but he found he could lift it. When it was close enough to inspect, he dropped the object and withdrew his hand. It was the leg of one of the machinegun crew, severed from the grenade blast, and coated in scorching and drying blood.

Reaching around the bunker, he found the corpses of the gun team. They were all dead by the time he tried to feel for a pulse on them. Then his fingers clasped around the sound-powered telephone. He brought it up to his ear and tried the transmit button.

"Bunker sixteen to mortar pits," Hauser said. "Bunker sixteen to anyone. There are zips approaching the wire!"

"Who is this?" replied a hollow voice. "Where the hell is Murphy?"

"The gun team is dead," Duke said. "I’m Hauser."

"Get on the sixty, Hauser, and if you can find the Claymore detonators, fire those fuckers off double-quick! That’ll keep them back!"

Yanking the phone cord out as far as he could, Duke climbed over the dead M-60 gunner and tucked the stock of the machinegun into his armpit. He checked the feed, keeping his head down as a few AK-47 rounds ricocheted into the firing slit. When he was satisfied the weapon would fire, he straightened up, aimed at the approaching wave of Cong, and opened up.

The M-60 chattered in Duke’s grip, spitting out volleys of fiery rounds downrange. Hauser shifted to steer the fire of the machinegun into the charging sappers and skirmishers.

"Hauser!" the voice on the phone yelled. "Bunker sixteen! Hauser!"

"I’m here," Duke said over the metallic chatter of the M-60.

"Where are they? Give me a reference point to fire the mortars at!"

"They’re spread out, about five meters from the wire!" Hauser yelled, shooting at a cluster of sappers that were trying to breach the outer wire. "All the way back to the tree line!"

"We can’t fire that close to the trenches! Use the Claymores, dammit! Use them or we’re gonna lose the perimeter!"

Duke stopped firing the M-60 and dove to the floor of the bunker, scrambling around over the dead corpses and trying to feel under them for the detonators. Near one of the corners, he finally found them, four small handgrips with triggers.

There was no time to check the wires and connections. Hauser yanked the safeties on the detonators and squeezed the triggers one after the next until he heard the first of the series-wired Claymores go off.

Duke picked up the phone and returned to the gun slit, preparing the M-60 to fire again. He watched the Claymore mines hurl thousands of tiny ball bearings into the attacking VC fighters, tearing their lines to shreds.

"Claymores detonated! Fire for effect!"

After the mines decimated the assault teams, the 81mm mortars began crashing into the tree line, blasting large swaths out of the enemy push. The volume of friendly fire within the camp’s trenches grew, as reinforcements poured into the outer trenches. Squads heavy with machine gunners and grenadiers with M-79s, now well in range to engage the remaining VC, fired viciously into the routed formations.

-xxx-

__

We beat them off this time, but it was close. Had they made it through the wire, it would’ve gone hand to hand, and I would’ve been alone. I doubt the bunker would’ve stayed up if the sappers got to it while I was still inside.

After the mess was finished, another hour of shooting and reloading, and shooting once more, I finally got to crawl out of the bloody mess that I had been crawling around. Some of the medics thought I had taken a few rounds, but I assured them that there were men in worse condition than I was.

Security teams went into the blasted-out zones to try and count the VC dead. Apparently, there were very few remains to speak of. Some of the enemy must’ve carried off their comrades. Others were probably blown to bits where they lay by the high explosive and canister barrages from the mortar pits.

Intelligence suspected that they threw a whole battalion out at us. It sure felt like it was just myself against a whole VC battalion.

All I wanted to do was go back to the hooch, find out if Candy, Sparks, Doggie and the squad were okay, and then catch some shut eye.

I don’t think anyone cared that I never got relieved from my sentry post. At least, not until Draper debriefed me after a good nine hours of rack time and a cold beer from the medical hooch’s refrigerator.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Eight  
"Back Into the Bad Bush"

-xxx-

__

Pleiku Special Forces Fighting Camp  
September, 1970

The rainy season – what would’ve been an autumn of leaves changing colors back home – had come a tad earlier than the Air Force weathermen at Da Nang predicted. Well, we were never sure at the Pleiku base what the weather services’ accuracy truly was.

The Central Highlands seemed to have clouds and storms with minds of their own. They often opened up, and the rain came down just when we didn’t need ‘em to. Matter of fact, we used to joke that the sky worked for Victor Charles, or some of our patrol areas in the Central Highlands should’ve been collectively called "Shit Luck Alley."

The camp ended up being defensive for the better part of August. And, when the rainy season started to rear its ugly head, the handful of ARVN Rangers’ combat patrols that went out ended up being bogged down searching flooded-over rice paddies and little washed out villages for VC arms and supply caches.

The regular Army units didn’t fare very well during that initial storming either. Many of the mechanized units couldn’t mount up and chase the VC when they tried to evade our troops across the floodplains where villagers planted staple crops. The VC turned the main highways into mine-laden, mud-soaked choke points, and ambushed the shit outta the grunts day and night.

Supply convoys bogged down, tanks and One-Thirteens were useless death boxes in road ambushes, and air support couldn’t always fly. None of us wanted to be near ground zero after calling in an Arc Light _mission either. So, we left the fast movers and Buffs to shit canning other choice pieces of terrain._

The damn guerillas seemed to have taken the advantage away from the good guys, and MAC-V was dead set on starting September with our boys taking the advantage back. They finally released the reins on the Special Forces camps and MIKE forces, ordering us back to full regular operations. There was even talk of permitting certain reconnaissance teams to go on the offensive.

All I knew was it was raining – hard – when this new face, a shady fellow from the CIA, arrived. Little did I know that my life would change that very day in a number of ways…

Before the CIA spook arrived, the Roadrunner Nine squad had just come back from a long patrol. We had gone back to the area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail where we had called down the A-6 napalm strike and wiped out the major gook supply column that Intel said couldn’t possibly be there.

Draper announced the news from MAC-V during the daily all-hands briefing and then promptly put our team on patrol. We stomped around the bush looking for VC to ice. Candy had us do our thing, and we started home again.

This time, the trip into Indian Country was so hot, it was a fuckin’ inferno. Tranh took two rounds from an AK in his gut while covering our withdrawal to the dustoff LZ. Three of the rookie ‘Yards caught it in the field, an’ we could only get one humped out to the slicks. He didn’t make it back to Pleiku alive.

Luckily, we had Tranh partly patched up in the slick and the emergency surgery team at our fighting camp was good enough to finish the job before our Montagnard buddy bought his very own piece of the farm.

We were getting tight as a little band of brothers. Candy was still in command, and even got the word that he might succeed the camp CO at Pleiku if he stayed in country long enough. Orders from MAC-V to field commanders about personnel retention extended Sparks’ tour by a couple months, which pissed him off to no end, but losses among the Special Forces people were mounting, and replacements were coming up short.

Of course, Doggie was still my best buddy. He had his high and low points with the whole marijuana thing. But we pulled together as a team, and kept him apart from the bad influences in camp as best as we could. Sad to say, it didn’t stop his growing addiction entirely, it just slowed the spiraling down.

As much as I wanted to help Doggie, he was his own man. Just like Master Sergeant Draper always said, "Sometimes, you can’t fight another man’s will to do whatever the fuck he pleases."

Is it bad for me to feel like letting him just go off and do what he wanted? I didn’t want the kind of apathy the Army had about this stuff getting to me and breaking up Doggie’s and my friendship.

Have you ever had a day where you felt like the shit just kept on coming, the kind of day where there was no end to the bad news? I was about to have a day like that…

-xxx-

The rain fell hard like mid-western hailstones, pelting the corrugated steel roof of the Roadrunner squad hooches as if there were a thousand Pygmies tap dancing in the sleeping soldiers’ heads. A few of the soldiers tried to lull themselves into a fitful slumber, while others rolled noisily in their government cots and ratty field blankets. In some ways, the rat-a-tat-a-tat of the torrential storm on the hooch was hypnotic, but in all of the soldiers’ heads, the sounds that the rain could be masking were much more dangerous.

Sergeant Hauser snoozed lightly, while two of the racks next to him lay unoccupied. Doggie had pulled bunker duty with Sparks, and the camp troublemakers no longer lived in the same hooch – they had been regrouped when a VC mortar hit on their original quarters collapsed it and forced them all out.

When thunder rolled across the sky and added to the natural symphony of the falling drops outside the hooch, the noise finally triggered Hauser’s sense of insecurity. He rolled out of his rack and slipped into a fresh set of camouflage utilities. His M-177 carbine and bandoleer with fresh magazines rested at the foot of his cot, and he snatched them up, throwing a green vinyl poncho over his head.

Intending to find his buddy’s assigned bunker to chat a few hours of the rainstorm away, Hauser opened the flimsy wooden door to the hooch and struck out into the stinging, pelting maelstrom.

-xxx-

__

The rain stank. It filled your nose with a stench that you can’t quite put a finger on. Nuc nom was bad, but it went away. The rain surrounded you with this sticky, humid smell. I don’t know if I could call it the smell of death, even though I’ve smelled death quite a lot since my time in country. It was… in a word… unique.

One of the platoon sergeants manning the night watch in the command hooch had a map of all the defensive bunkers, and tacked slips of paper with who had been assigned the duty at each one. I got permission to shake out and shiver for thirty seconds inside, just long enough to find Doggie’s name. He was assigned to the same bunker I fought from during the last enemy raid on the camp – bunker sixteen – but my heart sank when I saw who his teammates were…

-xxx-

"Knock-knock! Anybody home?" Duke asked as he stood in the stinging downpour outside Bunker Sixteen, looking into the wood-framed doorway.

"No one but us chickens," Doggie replied from his place at the sound-powered telephone. Newman and Goodland kept silent, smoking marijuana cigarettes while flanking the M-60 machinegun mounted behind the bunker’s slit window.

The distinctively pungent smell of the smoldering marijuana leaves nipped at Duke’s nostrils, and he tried to draw a breath without coughing from the rain’s stench outside and the drugs’ stench inside. He locked his gaze on Doggie, but could tell his friend was glassy-eyed from taking a few hits himself.

"Jesus, you guys have to smoke that shit out here too?" Hauser groused, keeping his M-177 pointed with barrel down and in an unthreatening manner.

"We can do what we want, Hauser," Goodland growled with a slight slur in his voice. "This ain’t yer duty station. You kin get the fuck right outta here, if you don’t like it."

"Not our fault we like the smell of burning our cigs better than the rain," Newman added.

"You assholes are on perimeter duty!" Duke shouted. "If Charlie hits your section of the wire while you’re high on this shit, those damn zips will run right through you like diarrhea through a Bangkok whore!"

Doggie fell silent, not even trying to stand up for his friend. Instead, he accepted a joint from Goodland and took a long drag. With a small cough, he managed to say, "This shit keeps us warm out here. Don’t knock it, Duke."

"Duke?" Newman whispered, as he and Goodland chuckled between themselves. "You sure as hell ain’t no fuckin’ John Wayne, Hauser. This bunker is getting a bit too full for comfort, m’ man. Best you haul ass so we can finish our tour, okay, _compadre_?"

Doggie’s eyes sank meekly, while Newman and Goodland’s almost burned holes in Hauser’s chest. "I’ll see you back at the hooch, Dobbs," Hauser whispered as he flipped the poncho hood up over his blond hair. He left the bunker quickly, taking an occasional backward glance as he made his way to the camp latrine.

-xxx-

__

If you thought the rain back in the Republic of Viet Nam stunk, you’ve never tried a field latrine at a Special Forces fighting camp. Yeah, yeah, it was surely better than squatting in the bush, over a hand-scratched hole with poisonous snakes and VC snipers watching your every move. But not by very much.

Basically, the latrine was a wooden structure, made with whatever offal the combat engineers left behind, so privacy was sometimes lacking. At least you could take a shit without the rain hitting you. You walked up into this building on stilts, kept your rifle nearby, dropped your trousers, and sat on a long, rough-hewn wooden bench with holes cut into it to do your business. Under the holes, we had a bunch of sawed-off fifty-five gallon oil drums semi-buried in the dirt.

You had to be careful – the latrine stank to high heaven. And, on hot days, we prayed for the shit can detail to get their work done early, or that we were conveniently away on patrol. Once the drums were full, they had to be hauled out from under the latrine hut, and the junk everyone left behind was mixed with some spare diesel fuel and lit on fire. The shit can detail then had to stir the burning excrement with a pole to make sure all of it cooked off.

It was a really dirty job, and the officers generally stuck the recalcitrant junior sergeants with supervising the operation. Nobody believed in making the Vietnamese do shit can detail, even though they used our nice, Government Issue holes too. Guess the "Hearts and Minds" thing even extended to the bottom of the barrel jobs.

Even in the smelliest, remotest parts of the world, the Army wouldn’t let us just dump our bodily wastes into a convenient river or trench somewhere. The docs said it was a health hazard. The officers said we didn’t want to ruin the locals’ crops. And we operators never wanted to piss Draper off enough to be assigned to the shit can detail. Trust me, it was bad.

Because the latrine was on stilts, sometimes the VC would think it was important, like the surgical hooch or the command post, and try to knock it out with a mortar round or two. Like taking a dump in there wasn’t dangerous enough! There were also stories floating ‘round the camps that troop units always found a way to get rid of their hard ass sergeants or dumb ass officers by leaving extra surprises during a particularly long shit visit.

Yeah, it was really murder. The grunts called it "fragging" and always found a way to justify it as enemy action, to keep the CID boys from sniffing around too much. Nobody seemed to wanna take a shot at anyone at Pleiku, but there was a first time for everything…

-xxx-

Hauser reached the latrine after passing a handful of patrolling guards and other soldiers that had trouble sleeping. The structure was empty of people and unlit at night, but Hauser found the angle-head Army flashlight someone was smart enough to keep hanging from the entry door. It even had fresh batteries.

The young sergeant selected a hole and proceeded to do his business, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell of human excrement wafting up from the collection drums. The rain continued to fall, rapping and popping as it hit the angled wooden roof of the latrine.

Many of the soldiers knew every little creak in the wooden planking, having used the camp latrine religiously when not patrolling. Hauser’s ears were so entranced by the rainfall that he didn’t hear a hinged access door under the latrine being opened.

His sharp hearing did catch the metallic ping that followed, instantly warning his brain of potential danger – a familiar sound, but out of place. He flicked off the flashlight and scrambled to gather his rifle and pull his trousers up from around his ankles.

Something dark and small rolled across the plank floor, out from under the bench with the holes cut in them. In the dark, Hauser’s eyes picked out that it was about the size of a baseball…

"Shit!" Hauser managed to exclaim when he realized the sound and the object were exactly what he feared. The fuse spoon from a hand grenade had popped just before someone from outside rolled it under his feet.

Scrambling quickly, he burst out of the latrine door mere milliseconds before the high explosive grenade ripped the fragile structure apart. Hauser didn’t care about the warm feeling on his back, or the stinging bite of a few small pieces of wood splinters that cut at his flesh. When he landed face first in the mud, he only cared that he was still alive. That thought was followed by anger, and an instant suspicion about who was actually behind the blast.

It was certainly not a VC mortar…

-xxx-

__

Can you believe this shit? Someone tried to frag me back in the ‘Nam! It wasn’t plainly obvious that Newman or Goodland were up to no good. Probably both of the scumbags hatched the idea. At the time, I didn’t think how one of them could’ve pulled it off while standing guard duty with Doggie in the same bunker.

Anyway, in the moments after the shit hit the fan, I wasn’t really sure. It could’ve even been a VC infiltrator with a spare TNT surprise. I never saw anyone lurking around to see if the deed was done. My ears were ringing from the explosion and then the alarm horn on top of the command and signal hooch blew. I had no clues that my head could register.

And then, the camp went all eyes out, like it usually does when something strange - like an explosion inside the perimeter - would require. There would’ve been no chance to figure out who was at their post and who wasn’t, with every fighting man in the camp running and shouting and stumbling in the mud and shit that pooled around the busted-out latrine hooch.

A couple sentries found me in the mud, with a few deep cuts in my bare ass from the splinters flying everywhere. So, while the rest of the camp went crazy, I got hauled off to the medical hooch to get poked and prodded. The sawbones on duty proudly pronounced me fit to patrol within an hour. And, if that son-of-a-bitch ever shows the photo around that I know he took, I’m gonna kill him to this day.

-xxx-

Master Sergeant Draper stood just inside the canvas door flap that hung at the entrance of the medical hooch, leaning against one of the support uprights and popping a piece of chewing gum in his mouth. He regarded Hauser with a lopsided grin on his face while the sergeant slipped back into his uniform.

"So it was your fault my whole camp had to wake up in the middle of the night," Draper growled. "That damn latrine is still a fuckin’ magnet for VC mortars, even after we half-buried it in the shit can pit. Good thing you got out with just that pig sticker up your ass. But since you decided to go tramping around the perimeter and then lit up the damn place, maybe you ought to be in charge of repairing the damage, if there’s anything left of it when the bucket brigade is finished dousing the fire."

Duke steamed as Draper mentioned the usual cover up for a fragging attempt. "There was no VC activity in the woods, Sarge! Some asshole inside this camp rolled a Mark One firecracker under my shitter!"

"That’s a mighty dangerous accusation," Draper said, chewing his gum noisily like a cow. "Could start a whole mess of trouble. Bring in CID… They’d wanna question you about the latrine blowing up. Not to mention most of the CIDG’s and ARVN’s will think there’s a VC agent in their midst. If you wanna see a camp witch hunt, just spread that rumor around without any proof. And then you can forget about the majority of those people deciding to stick around when the shit hits again."

"I understand that our mission is to mobilize the ARVN’s and CIDG’s to fight the VC here," Duke replied. "But I think I know who put the frag under my ass. Just go ask Goodland and Newman. Either one of them could’ve followed me back from the wire and done it, and gotten back to the bunker during the scramble."

"Fat chance of that, Hauser," Draper growled. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and held it up, even though Duke couldn’t read the writing. "This is the last check in log from the CP. I pulled it when the alert sounded. I also know you popped in to find out where your precious buddy Dobbs was posted for his bunker duty – Sergeant First Class Thomas told me after you left. Bunker Sixteen, manned by Dobbs, Goodland and Newman was manned up two minutes before the latrine went up. They also called in after the scramble to report no enemy contact in their section of the wire. None of ‘em left the bunker."

"Bullshit, Sergeant!" Duke growled. "Had to be one of those bastards! They’ve been peddling their shit to my buddy and I’ve had it!"

Draper stood tall and blocked the door flap. "Maybe you’re not ready to return to duty yet, Hauser. I think you should stay in here and cool your jets for a while. Your team lieutenant has a mission warning order, and will brief the team in a couple hours. And, between you and me, I think while you’re out there humping the bush on this one, you had best seriously reconsider this stink you’re thinking about making. Let my experience as the top fucking kick in this camp burn into your headgear. You read me, soldier?"

Duke couldn’t put down the anger he was feeling, but he knew Draper could do too much to him if he disobeyed. "I read you, Sarge. I’ll be at the briefing and get some rest here until then."

"Good." Draper turned to leave and looked over his shoulder. "And, watch your ass better next time."

-xxx-

__

The camp calmed back down, as it usually did after an alert. Everyone tried to catch forty more winks while the relief troops assembled by the CP for their bunker assignments. And I sat in the damn medical hooch unwinding and thinking about Draper’s warning.

My head spun from the facts. If Goodland and Newman were in the bunker with Dobbs, then who could’ve tossed the TNT firecracker into the latrine? Maybe a VC infiltrator or a scumbag "chieu hoi" turncoat from the ARVN reconnaissance platoon tried to do it to test our responses or procedures.

There was a missing piece to the drug puzzle in our camp, but if the Roadrunner Nine team had a new mission, I wouldn’t really have the time to dwell on it much.

-xxx-

"Good to see you up and around, Hauser," Lieutenant "Candy" Wilson said with a half joking tone when Duke drew aside the canvas tent flap that was being used to keep water out of the command hooch’s outer room.

The sight that spread before the young sergeant was not the usual for the day watch at the camp. Rather, the Vietnamese radio talkers and their American sergeant of the watch were someplace else.

The camp commander, Master Sergeant Draper, an American with dark sunglasses over his eyes, and three unfamiliar Vietnamese men were all huddling over the metal folding table that the radiomen normally used to pass reports around and do general clerical work.

When the Roadrunner Nine survivors were added to the gaggle, it made for a very stuffed space, with everyone trying to shuffle around the low spots in the dirt floor, where rainwater was already pooling and mud had started to form.

"Settle in, people!" Draper’s voice boomed over the assembly. "This’ll just take longer if we don’t get on with it!"

Eventually, the murmurs stopped and the bespectacled man stepped forward. The moment he stepped under the single yellow bulb that lit the hooch interior, Duke had the feeling that the guy wasn’t all as he appeared.

The man wore rather expensive-looking sunglasses, steel-rimmed and specially shaped to fit, much like the amber-lensed sniper’s shooting eyewear in contemporary times. He had standard OG-107 olive drab fatigues, which hung loose and baggy from the moisture, pocket cargo and the generally poor fit of the pattern. He didn’t stand too tall, maybe five foot three or four, which was roughly Sparks’ height.

But there, the similarities ended. The man’s fatigues bore no sign of having identifying name tapes ever sewn above the breast pockets. He didn’t wear a unit crest or patch, and his collar didn’t have any rank marking, not even the black or olive threaded "subdued" stuff that was unofficially adopted by units in Vietnam.

The man unrolled a silk-screened map that he was carrying in a sealed protective case, before clearing his throat and addressing the assembled group.

"Okay, everyone. Thanks for settling down so quickly. My name is Mister Black. I’m a member of the strategic intelligence section of General Westmoreland’s headquarters, working out of MAC-V-SOG. The three Vietnamese gentlemen that arrived with me are advisors and critical to my mission out here."

"A couple of them don’t look like much more than backwater farm boys," Sparks whispered to Duke under his breath, catching a glare from Candy before clamming up and paying attention.

"The reason we have requested the Roadrunner Nine team to assist in our mission," Mister Black continued, "is because you have extensive knowledge of the Ho Chi Minh Trail movement network in and around this sector."

He pointed at a section of the map, which all of the American members of Roadrunner Nine knew well. The indigenous fighters of the team didn’t need the map to understand what Mister Black was driving at.

"We have a reliable source of intelligence which has indicated that a small staff of North Vietnamese Regular Army officers will be moving south along the trail, bypassing the usual DMZ infiltration routes, with orders to escort a high-priority package of instructions for dispersal to the regional Viet Cong commanders.

"The priority package is most likely the outline for a coordinated offensive against all of South Vietnam, and may include instructions for another Tet-like destabilization operation. Some of the officers may also be moving south to act as liaisons should an NVA push be timed to coincide with the VC guerilla actions these dispatches are suspected to contain."

Mumbles began to rise in the room, mainly from Draper, the Roadrunner team members and their CIDG fighters. Mister Black waved to everyone to be silent.

"You now know the gravity of this mission. Even if we end up humping the bush for a few days and find out that it was all a cluster fuck and wild goose chase, we are performing a critical task towards stopping the enemy’s ability to run us into the ground all over this war zone.

"If we can get their plans, we can get their locations and rough numbers. Sure, other groups will probably be carrying copies of orders, or spy networks might be moving the plans south as well. But we can stop the coordinated attacks from going off without a strong response ready. We could stonewall Victor Charlie in his tracks."

"What do you know about their escorts?" Candy asked, scribbling a few reminder notes in a small memo pad.

"They are supposedly traveling with one of the usual supply columns, except you can probably expect a hand-picked company of North Vietnamese commandos specifically assigned to protecting the NVA officers. For now, our orders are to find them, fix them, and call down fire. If anything new develops, I will brief you in the field.

"We’ll be moving under strict radio silence, except for check-ins that I might have to make with MAC-V-SOG in Saigon. Even those will be at random periods, so the enemy cannot attempt to fix our position and movement.

"We’re not even going to insert by helicopter, since it draws VC attention. Instead, we’ll chopper out from here at around oh two hundred and rendezvous with a motorized sampan on the Xon River, skippered by one of our intelligence assets.

"The motorized sampan will run us up to our drop site and we march in. If the timing of the column is right from our surveillance photos, and we don’t get held up avoiding any roving VC patrols, we should hit them during bivouac. We identify our bag men, and call in the big guns. Then we walk the hell back out again."

"Sounds like another day at the office, for these boys," Draper jibed, cracking a piece of chewing gum between his teeth.

"It’s gonna be dangerous to go back in that part of the bush," Candy added. He pointed to the map where the team had lost three of the replacements that had joined the squad. "We got hit not even a week ago while humping to a preplanned extraction site between the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Xon River. Three of my CIDG’s didn’t come back from that patrol. Hope you’ve got a backup plan in case this place is still thick with a garrison from the bad guys."

"I understand the risk factor," Mister Black said. "But the rewards are worth the risk. I would’ve tried to blow sunshine up your asses, but you and the three sergeants over there are reported to be really smart guys. If we don’t come back because the enemy got us, nobody’s gonna shed a tear. The objective is _that_ important."

"Anybody want out of this one?" Draper asked, glaring across the communications room at the members of Roadrunner Nine. No one flinched or offered up any objections.

"Good," Mister Black said. "Gear up, draw weapons and supplies according to the packing list I provided, and meet me on the chopper pad at oh two hundred hours. Don’t be a second late, any of you…"

-xxx-

Meanwhile, at a 25th Infantry Division "Tropic Lightning"  
Fire Support Base, southwest of the Pleiku sector…

"Come on in, Staff Sergeant Wilkinson," Major Justin Briggs, the fire base commander, said. He beckoned to the tall, black soldier waiting outside the doorway to his office.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" SSGT Lonzo Wilkinson asked. He and three other men in his Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol team had just ended a six-day scouting mission and were hoping for a break, especially since they had lost two men in the patrol. Two of the LRRP patrol survivors, PFC Richard "Dickie" Saperstein and Corporal Wade Collins were being treated with minor wounds sustained in the field.

"Sorry to do this to you, Wilkinson. I know your boys just hustled back inside the wire after a hairy one. The guys from Delta Company picked up the bodies of Joey Thompson and Frank Stoddert where the Cong ambushed you. You might want to check them out before Graves Registration gets hold of ‘em.

"While your team was humping back in, I got new orders," the major added. "We’re gonna be pushing north to hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail and clear out a whole bunch of hamlets in this AOR, in conjunction with the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, which is marching west from the Pleiku sector and Central Highlands.

"Brigade wants all the LRRP assets from the division stomping on snake holes up along the trail, to see what kind of reinforcements or NVA regulars we might be going up against. Unfortunately, that means you and your band of rogues: Escobedo, Collins and Saperstein. Collins’ request for leave time at China Beach has been revoked by emergency orders, of course.

"Standing orders are find ‘em, fix ‘em, and the arty boys will wipe their asses for ‘em with TNT. Word on the street is you’ll also have "Arc Light" available on command. The zoomies will probably have Buffs from Guam on overflight to Korat, Thailand during our entire movement.

"Good news is, you get twenty-four hours to recycle and draw gear before we chopper you out with a Pink Team that’s scouting ahead for one of the leg battalions. I’ve also got two replacements for you, from another LRRP team that got wasted in 1st Brigade’s AOR. ‘Guy Next Door’ looking one, good on the pig, and a Japanese-American kid from California, some kinda whiz with bow and arrow and a damn decent marksman. Some people say both of ‘em are on second tours, and have one uncanny sense for the shit out in the bush.

"There’s no time to make friendly with them, so you’ll have to do that in the field. They’re choppering in around midday, but they’ve got their brief already." Major Briggs passed along a few sheets of typed paper from the personnel clerk. "This stuff is the fifty-cent tour of your replacements. It’s all I’ve got so far. Meet them on the chopper pad when their slick comes in and see to ‘em. Good luck, Ranger."

"No problem, Major," SSGT Wilkinson replied, snapping a quick salute to the FSB commander. "We’ll get the job done."

-xxx-

__

Operation "Riptide"  
Day One, 0230 hours

We choppered out to a secured area along the Xon River, where an Army Engineers unit was working on rebuilding a bridge that was considered strategic for the ARVN units working the sector. Having fallen victim to several VC raids in the last month, the bridge building site had been reinforced with two companies of Engineers and a couple platoons of military police while they kept the route open for friendly convoys.

As the CIA guy, Mister Black, had promised, a Vietnamese motorized sampan was waiting for us when the two choppers carrying our Roadrunner squad and some extra mission gear that we were toting along touched down at the Engineer campsite.

The rickety old tub had definitely seen better days! It was mostly of wooden construction, and looked Chinese, like a miniature version of the big sailing junks that used to cruise up and down Victoria Harbour, out in the direction of Hong Kong. Most motorpans were really skinny and used for fishing, but the Brown Water Navy classified just about anything Vietnamese smaller than a coastal freighter as a motorpan those days.

I laid eyes on the captain and his three mates – the whole rowdy lot looked like a bunch of river pirates Mister Black had bribed for the trip up the Xon, rather than what I pictured CIA "assets" might be. The skipper of the motorpan even had a black eye patch to really make the pirate image stick.

Two other Vietnamese were with the barge crew when we arrived. One of them looked fairly well educated, wore roundish glasses, and had the wrinkles of middle age on his face. The other one seemed tough, but not a member of the tanned river crew. He looked more like he worked a rice paddy somewhere in the Highlands.

Between Sparks, Candy, Doggie and me, we didn’t think much of the mission. Mister Black wanted our infiltration to be hush-hush, and well, frankly, a motorpan ride up the Xon would do it. Our leaky boat would fit right in with the rest of the traffic that ran up and down with cargoes bound for the Mekong Delta and points beyond.

-xxx-

The black-painted Vietnamese motorpan was very unassuming in its accommodations, although she was definitely operated by some salty river pirates. The CIA had been rather generous in their retainers to the crew, because the watercraft sported twin mounts for fifty caliber machineguns, concealed on the bow and fantail. Not to mention two crates with shiny, American weapons that sat inside the wheelhouse behind the skipper’s chair, inevitably for the crew’s use in a hot situation.

Duke and Doggie sat amidships, dangling their legs over the edge of the deck as the brown water of the Xon River sloshed past a few inches below the soles of their jungle boots. Both men listened to the night sounds moving around them, as they allowed their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Very few lights were kept on aboard the motorpan, aside from those in the wheelhouse that the skipper used for navigation and as anti-collision beacons.

"You feel worried about this mission, Conrad?" Doggie asked as he shook off some drowsiness and picked at an open can of C-ration ham and lima beans.

"Not really, Henry," Duke replied. "You? Something eating you?"

"Yeah. We’ve been using our time doing recon up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and when we got into the shit with the VC, we’ve been badly outnumbered. Now, it looks like this "Riptide" job is offensive. What the hell are we gonna do when so few of us are actually going in to pick a fight with an enemy column?"

"We’re gonna do our job and watch out for each other, Staff Sergeant Henry Dobbs. That’s what friends do."

"I know, Conrad," Doggie added. "But it’s just nagging at me this time. I feel like it’s my time to get my ticket punched."

"That’s good, buddy. Knowing that the fear is there will make you more alert to what dangers are around you. Your ticket won’t get punched if you don’t let it by being crazy brave or plain stupid."

"I- I- I’m sorry for getting roped in by the dope crowd, Conrad," Doggie said. "I’ve decided to quit the stuff after what happened to you in the latrine."

"That’s good," Duke said. "You’ll live longer that way. What do you know about the latrine?"

"All I know is that Goodland and Newman have friends, especially the guy who gets the stash into camp. He’s obviously got the most to lose if you were to bring CID into the camp to investigate the drugs. All they said in the bunker was that someone was going to find a way to silence you. I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you somehow."

"And gotten yourself in the same pickle?" Duke replied. "Hell, no! Who’s to say that whatever they used to tag me and send me to the great beyond wouldn’t have gotten you too?"

"I’m just glad whoever it was didn’t actually get you. It’s hard enough trying to stay alive out here. But to have to look over your shoulder even in the camp where you have to feel safe…"

-xxx-

__

Meanwhile, flying over the Cambodian border…

"LZ Night Raider is in sight, Staff Sergeant Wilkinson," the Huey pilot shouted over his shoulder. "We’re doing it fast and hot. Best I can do in this soup is hold the skids in place. I can’t guarantee you a nice easy step down."

"Then find us a soft spot," Wilkinson shouted back over the throbbing rotors and hum of the turbine engine. He signed with his fingers that the LZ was in sight, and the other five LRRP soldiers nodded. One by one, they finished smearing dark camouflage paint on their faces and checking their gear. The men nearest the troop bay door slid it open and helped the door gunner suspend his M-60 machinegun from a bungee cord.

The LZ was on the edge of a flooded rice paddy, set upon by the locals to get a quick harvest and replant before VC tax collectors made their monthly rounds. The humidity of the previous day had caused an extraordinary amount of condensation and evaporation in the flooded field, covering the ground in a gray pall that floated as high as a hundred feet above. It was sufficient to make the pilot’s ability to judge his altitude and approach a difficult task.

The LRRP team in the Huey also knew that fog like what they were about to land in could also be concealing nasty enemy surprises. Without exchanging words, the six men glanced to one another and charged their weapons, including the two new arrivals who had joined Wilkinson’s team as replacements.

The arrivals seemed like old friends – actually, more like blood brothers. The two knew what the score was with one another without so many words. The Japanese-American soldier, a fresh-faced man who could pass for a nineteen or twenty year old on any street in suburbia, had a depth to his eyes that hid the secrets of what he had witnessed in his two tours. His name was Thomas Arashikage – the last name translated into "Storm Shadow".

His partner was a tall, blond man. As nondescript as Tommy was, his partner was the same. Dark eyes hid beneath dark brown camouflage paint and the shadow of his round-brimmed boonie hat. They held the horrors of war inside. No one called him by his real name, not even Tommy. Some REMF in a headquarters records unit probably knew his name, typed neatly on a DD-201 dossier. Everyone in the field knew him as "Snake Eyes".

Wilkinson regarded his new teammates across the troop bay. He couldn’t believe that the two men were on his team. They had an almost mythical reputation in First Brigade. It was something that paper pushers and officers never heard, just rumors and tall tales whispered about over beers in the noncom hooches. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow by themselves were reputable dealers of death, or so the rumor mill had spread. But together, they were nearly invincible.

Wilkinson hoped that their battlefield luck would somehow be a talisman for the entire team…


	10. Career Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temporary Chapter Number - Takes place in the 1980's after Duke returns from the 'Nam and he is offered to join the Joe Team. There will be lots of 'Nam action to be filled in. (This was originally a stand alone ficlet for a FanFic 100 Challenge and is due to be folded into the story.

_Fort Benning, Columbus, Georgia_  
December, 1983  


A light rain cascaded from the moisture-laden clouds above Fort Benning. Due to the milder temperatures in the west-central region of Georgia, winters weren't as bad as what people in the northern latitudes had suffered. The favorable climate allowed Fort Benning to be used as a training base for new soldiers all year round. 

The compound of trainee barracks at the United States Army Airborne Center and School was still dark at 0430 hours. Pairs of soldiers in olive drab rain ponchos, manning the fire watch patrol, walked the paved roadways between the matched rows of cookie-cutter buildings under the soft white light of incandescent street lamps. At the very end of the compound, a single, large barracks stood with random lights in some of the windows illuminated. 

This larger barracks, where the Airborne School's on-duty drill instructors were housed, also had a large meeting room for the non-commissioned officer cadre of the training units, and its lights were on, a beacon in the night. Silhouetted by the lights, a male figure paced back and forth between the row of windows that overlooked the trainee barracks. 

The pacing man stopped and faced the assembly of drill instructors seated in the room, running a hand through his sandy blond hair, while the last arrivals to the early meeting found empty seats and doffed their distinctively shaped "Smokey Bear" hats and settled down. 

"Good morning, Gentlemen," Master Sergeant Conrad Steven Hauser said, calling his staff meeting to order with a quiet intensity in his voice. 

"Good morning, Master Sergeant!" the drill instructors responded in unison. 

Unlike the rest of the assembly of Army drill instructors, who made a living from bellowing and browbeating, Hauser's calm but firm voice commanded respect with any tone. He, and the three senior company sergeants of the Airborne Training Battalion, were the only instructors in the group that had a long record of combat experience. So, when they spoke, everyone shut up and listened. 

"Weather's looking shitty today, over the airfield," Hauser said, aiming a long pointer at the meeting room's chalkboard, which he had loaded with hand scrawled notes. "The zoomies aren't likely to fly any training jump sorties today. Not that I would encourage you to go dropping any of my trainees onto my ranges with waterlogged 'chutes and broken limbs. The ground simulators and two-hundred-fifty foot suspension towers will be okay unless you see lightning in the sky." 

"What other activities can we trade for jump practice, Top?" one of the less-experienced instructors asked. 

"Everything else is good, Sergeant Willis. You can take your 'legs' through PT and running the Currahee. Small arms pistol and rifle ranges, along with the hundred-meter grenade range, will stay open today unless conditions dictate otherwise. Make sure you stay on top of the range controllers for the safety of your men." 

Hauser paused while the drill instructors jotted down notes for themselves from the chalkboard into their personal memo pads. Hauser had meticulously noted all the variations in the daily training syllabus on the board, and he was a stickler at making sure his instructors knew their unit activities inside and out. 

In a large organization like the Parachute Training Battalion, where a small cadre of non-coms had to play nursemaid over several hundred jump trainees per rotation, safety and coordination were everything. The DIs only had a short time to complete their trainees' qualifications, before the Army took them back and sent them to war or their "home" units. It was Hauser's job to make sure the Battalion ran like a well-oiled machine. 

"Today is the all-battalion run," Hauser continued. "So, after the usual 'trainee wakeup' I want the companies mustered in run formation on the parade field by 0515. We'll get everyone back to base for morning chow by 0615. If your trainees slack off, then they get to wait at the back of my chow line, as usual. I will be there to supervise the run from the front, but as soon as the evolution is complete and the Battalion is in chow, I have to report to the Training Brigade offices for some top brass bullshit. Master Sergeant Thomas from Alfa Company will be standing in for me while I am with the Brigade honchos. Any questions?" 

"No, Master Sergeant!" the drill instructors chanted. 

"All right. Get to it, you slouches. As they say at Fort Jackson: _'If it ain't rainin', then we ain't trainin'_. Dismissed, gentlemen." 

The drill instructors filed out of the meeting room, mumbling softly amongst each other, leaving Hauser standing at the windows as he gazed at the barracks complex. He seemed like he was mentally counting every individual trainee in their bed racks, making sure all of his people were accounted for. 

*** 

The battalion run went off with the usual professionalism that Hauser's cadre of instructors exhibited under his leadership. With the majority of trainees settling in at the mess hall for morning chow, MSGT Hauser made his way to the headquarters building of the Fort Benning Infantry Training Brigade. 

A number of the training battalion's officers were dressed up in their Class A uniforms, milling around in the headquarters' reception lobby. Few of them paid Hauser any mind when he walked into the building in a clean and pressed set of camouflage BDUs. One officer, the brigade's enlisted career advisor, caught sight of Hauser and strode over to meet the senior NCO. 

"Master Sergeant Hauser! Hold on a minute!" the Personnel Division Major called across the lobby. Hauser stopped and looked around the crowd to find the owner of the voice. 

"Good morning, Major Booth," Hauser said, snapping a salute to the major. 

"I take it you've finally broken down, and come in to see me about signing up for OCS, right?" 

"Nossir. I was ordered to report here. No details given." 

"Well. I also noticed that you're a short timer. Should I expect to see your re-up papers signed and on my desk before your cadre buries you in a mud puddle somewhere between this office and the Currahee?" 

"The Army has been my life for many years, Major," Hauser replied. "I don't feel like changing careers now." 

The major sighed a moment and touched his brow as if to wipe away a bead of sweat. "Good, Master Sergeant. And here, I thought I'd get a chance to use the new sales pitch about re-upping bonuses and such on you." 

"If I was in this for the money, I would become an officer," Hauser stated, "with all due respect, sir." 

The voice of the brigade's civilian receptionist drew Hauser from his conversation with the personnel officer. "Master Sergeant Hauser! Is Master Sergeant Hauser in the lobby, please?" 

Hauser turned on his heel, but not before snapping a quick salute to the major. "I have to go, sir," he said. 

The major acknowledged the salute and nodded. "See that your paperwork gets signed, okay?" 

*** 

The receptionist led MSGT Hauser through the halls of the brigade headquarters until she found an unmarked office door. Knocking once, she turned the knob and urged Hauser to go in and report. 

The sight that greeted Hauser was a youngish officer, sitting behind the guest office's desk, with papers and 201 files scattered before him. Sitting at the desk in neatly starched Class A's, with the green jacket hanging from a coat hook against one wall, the young Colonel wore close-cropped blond hair and had square-jawed features not unlike his own. 

Hauser cleared his throat, straightening his posture to stand at attention before the colonel. "Ahem. Sir. Master Sergeant Hauser reporting as ordered, sir." When the colonel's eyes rose from the piece of paper he was studying, Hauser snapped a salute, touching his eyebrow and holding his hand in place. 

Colonel Clayton Abernathy rose respectfully from the desk and returned the salute, standing briefly at attention before gesturing to an empty chair for the sergeant. They shook hands before taking chairs and facing one another. 

"Master Sergeant Hauser," the colonel began. "It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Colonel Clayton Abernathy." 

"Good to meet you too, sir." 

Abernathy shuffled through a stack of 201 dossiers until he found one that he wanted and opened it in front of him. "Here we are, Sergeant. I see you've had quite a career." 

Hauser stifled a tickle in his nose with a muffled sniff. "Yes, sir. If you say so, sir." 

"You served in the Republic of Vietnam from 1970 to '72, in the Special Forces. Roadrunner recon teams. CIA Operation Phoenix. You even busted an Aussie officer who was selling out American units to the enemy. You helped start the CONUS Recondo school at Fort Hunter-Liggett and also trained scout-snipers there. You earned the Ranger tab while based Stateside, and served as part of an Army Ranger liaison team with the Marines in Lebanon in 1982. You jumped with the Rangers and Airborne troops into Grenada in 1983. I know you just assumed this post, and now your hitch is coming up." 

"You know a lot about me, sir," Hauser said with a deadpan expression on his face. 

"I know only what your file says, and what your previous commanders have written in this dossier. But what I found in here was quite impressive. I'd like to bend your ear for a moment, Hauser. However, I need you to also be aware that some things I am going to tell you must never leave this room." 

"I know the score, sir," Hauser replied. 

Abernathy casually flipped through the 201 file, even though he had read it thoroughly before Hauser's arrival. "I am touring a number of bases to find the best available manpower in the Armed Forces, to beef up a small, but highly capable Special Operations unit that has been placed under my command. So far, my enlisted men and women have performed admirably, and now I have been tasked to expand the unit." 

"I understand, sir." 

"My team is unlike any traditional special forces unit that you've worked with," Abernathy continued, "and it is tasked only with the highest of priority missions for national defense. It's a semi-covert counter-terrorist force." 

"I just rotated home from the Grenada operation, sir. Wouldn't you be more interested in younger boys fresh out of training and ready to fight?" 

"No, Hauser," Abernathy said. "I have to spend time and money training fresh faces. I know people like you are team players already. You have filled your qualifications jacket with the skills that I need, and you have lots of time in the shit. My team takes care of its own individual training and working as a group. It is certainly a challenging position, whether serving as a member of the team, or as part of my leadership cadre." 

"Am I on some sort of short list, sir?" Hauser asked. 

"Sort of. You do come highly recommended." 

"Can I think about it, sir?" 

"You can," Abernathy said, "but you can't talk about my team to anyone. We're a black, self-contained, classified op as far as the rest of the Army is concerned." 

"Understood, sir." 

"Sergeant Hauser, I would be lying if I told you that you're not at the head of my short list. However, I do need to know something. Were you going to stay on in the Army when your hitch is up? Perhaps the illustrious Major in the other room was about to sell you on attending OCS again? How many times have you refused the offer? Is it four now?" 

"Five, sir. They tried twice in Vietnam, to convince me to take a battlefield commission and attend OCS after my DEROS date." 

"Care to explain why a promising leader such as yourself would choose not to take OCS?" 

"No offense, sir, but living the life of a butter bar isn't my style. I don't feel like I can be an effective leader once I go into the world of the officers. I'm a grunt. You point me at my target and give me my orders. I find a way to make it work, and try to bring my boys home alive. I don't have to kowtow, or get into the politics of officership to do it." 

"No offense taken, soldier. Thank you for your honesty." The colonel stood up and offered Hauser a second handshake. "I was in the neighborhood shopping for talented officers or NCO's willing to become officers. Thank you for your time." 

Hauser accepted Colonel Abernathy's hand and shook it. "Thank you, sir. I hope that you find a talented NCO cadre to keep your talented officers alive, sir." 

Colonel Abernathy felt at that very moment that he couldn't just let Hauser go because he didn't want to be an officer. "How would you like to be at the head of that cadre, soldier?" 

"My record speaks for itself, Colonel. If you want me, you can cut me orders to report to your new base of operations. I follow my orders, sir. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a trainee battalion to attend to. May I take my leave, sir?" 

"Yes, Master Sergeant, go ahead." After Hauser shut the office door behind him, Colonel Abernathy withdrew a Department of the Army personnel requisition form and immediately began drafting a transfer order. 

"Welcome to the G. I. Joe Team, Master Sergeant Conrad "Duke" Hauser," Abernathy said under his breath, when he signed the DA form.


End file.
